


Of Mice and Men

by AoYokai



Category: No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1736414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AoYokai/pseuds/AoYokai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Nezumi, who left Tokyo to study in Oxford, now lives a simple life as a teacher in London. This time of peace ends when he receives messages from an old friend of his, calling him to come back and keep a promise they made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Odyssey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> English is not my native language, I’m sorry for any spelling and/or grammar mistakes that might be ahead.  
> It’s *fan*fiction; therefore--> I’m a fan and not the actual owner of No. 6, or any other piece of work that is mentioned in the story.

** Act I: Odyssey **

Nezumi never really liked Tokyo. He didn’t hate it, either; he was just indifferent about the place. Actually, he didn’t feel anything toward any place, so he never felt obliged to visit Japan after he finished college, four years ago. He just stayed in England, got a job as a teacher, and lived his plain, boring life peacefully. It wasn’t much, but this simple lifestyle fit Nezumi quite well.

Being a teacher was not that bad, actually. The pay was reasonable, he got to talk about his beloved books, and he had vacations quite often. While many people thought that as an English Literature graduate from Oxford, Nezumi could have done much more with his life, he couldn’t care less. Not living up to his potential didn’t bother him, and he preferred to keep the drama in the world of fiction.

But there he was, in a taxi, in Tokyo. When he first read the emails that asked him to come back, he almost dismissed them instantly. He didn’t want to go back to Tokyo, even if it was for a few days. In addition, the author of these messages was someone Nezumi would rather forget. Unfortunately, he didn’t forget that person, and worse, he didn’t forget the promise they made.

“Have a good day, sir!”

The taxi drove away, leaving Nezumi staring at the five-star hotel that was standing before him. He gently put his luggage down and took a crumpled piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans. He suppressed a sigh; the address was correct. He crammed the little note back into his pocket, picked up his luggage, and walked inside.  
A woman smiled at him from the reception desk.  
“How can I help you, sir?” Like the rest of the female employees in the hotel, her uniform included a buttoned-up shirt with short sleeves, a blue vest, a black skirt, and a blue bowtie. Nezumi snorted mentally. He hated the hotel the moment he saw it, but now he hated it even more.

“Yes, my name is Nezumi.”

“Just a second, sir.” The woman typed a few things in her computer. “Could you wait just a moment, sir,” she said, and disappeared through a door behind the reception desk.

A few minutes passed, and the woman came back, but before Nezumi could ask for his room, another woman interrupted him.

“Nezumi?” asked the woman.  
She was young, younger than Nezumi at least, and had brown eyes and short hair whose color matched her eyes. She was wearing a suit with a matching skirt and high-heeled shoes, which made her look more professional than the receptionist. Yet she didn’t seem very formal.

“It’s nice to finally meet you.” She reached her hand to shake his, “My name is Safu.”

“Yes, whatever.” Nezumi shook her hand hurriedly.

“Just like the stories,” Safu said. Nezumi couldn’t tell whether she was amused or thoughtful, but she most certainly was not upset at his rudeness.

“I bet you want to cut to the chase,” she continued eventually. “Follow me. Leave your luggage here; it’ll be taken care of.”  
Nezumi took a deep breath and followed Safu, who turned around and walked away without checking whether he was behind her or not. He could only hope Safu was showing him the way to his room; he was exhausted. All he wanted to do was to crumble into a bed with a book. Alone. All by himself. But he couldn’t lock himself in his room to recover from the horrors of the flight, not now at least, because although he prayed for rest more than anything at the moment, he knew Safu was taking him to his host.

Safu led him to the top floor and then through a maze of hallways. The carpets hid any sign of actual floor, and the pictures on the walls were probably more valuable than Nezumi himself. It was obvious that they were in an area that was off-limits for guests. It was the private property of the hotel’s owner—the owner who invited Nezumi over and who had absolutely hated this kind of ostentation when Nezumi had just moved to England, eight years ago.

Safu walked through the corridors silently. Her pace was steady, and she walked without looking around much, as if she had the whole floor memorized.

Eventually, they reached an elegant wooden door, with a sign that said “Waiting Room” in golden letters.

“We’re here,” Safu said, and put her hand on the rounded knob.

The room was spacious, with cream-colored couches, an ivory coffee table, and windows that replaced one of the walls. On the other walls were a few TV screens that were turned off and showed nothing but darkness. Out of the corner of his eye, Nezumi saw a bar in the far part of the room. On one of the couches sat a slim figure, wrapped in clothes in the same color as the couch.

“Long time no see, Nezumi.”

“Hardly long enough.” The tanned woman smirked bitterly at his answer, and Safu, who stood behind her with her arms crossed, rolled her eyes.

“As unpleasant as always,” the other woman said calmly, which only added to Nezumi’s anger.

“Old habits die hard,” he said mockingly. “But it looks like old dogs can learn new tricks, right, Inukashi?”

Inukashi’s calm expression turned sour, and she closed her eyes as if to remind herself to stay calm.

“Shut up,” she finally said.

“No thank you.”

“Now listen you little rat—” Inukashi stood up suddenly, arching her back and baring her teeth. Her appearance now corresponded much more closely to Nezumi’s memories of her, although she was thinner and wearing clothes that didn’t seem like they were used to wash the floor before she put them on.

“Inukashi.” Safu smiled behind her and tried to calm her down, in vain.

“I don’t want to hear anything coming out of your rotten mouth until it’s absolutely necessary, hear me?! Nothing!”  
She sat down, frowning.  
Safu sighed.

“You look pretty lively.” Nezumi sat on the couch across her.

“Disappointed?” Inukashi asked with a sad grin.

“Quite a bit. But I can take care of this little problem.”

“Ha! You wish.” Inukashi leaned her back into the couch.

“Seriously now, though.” Nezumi crossed his arms. “What’s with the walking suit?”

He gestured to Safu’s direction with his eyes.

“Excuse me for walking.” Safu raised an eyebrow, but Inukashi and Nezumi ignored her completely.

“I’ll have as many walking suits as I want, mind your own business,” Inukashi said, though both of them knew Nezumi was referring to more than just Safu.  
“Should we cut straight to the point, then?” Nezumi asked.

“Well yeah, about that…” Inukashi began to stumble on her words.

“You’re early,” Safu said, seeing Inukashi couldn’t make her point.

“Early?”

“You see? You won’t be able to fulfill your promise anytime soon,” Safu explained.

“Then… What am I doing here?” Nezumi asked, understanding the horrible reality Safu was presenting to him little by little.

“I didn’t think you’ll agree so soon, okay,” Inukashi defended. “I thought it’d take months and months to convince you to come!”

“So, am I supposed to sit here and wait?”

“You’ll be going back to London. Now that we know you’ll come when the time is right, we have no problem sending you back.” Safu tried to calm the two down.  
“Ridiculous,” Nezumi snorted. “When am I going back?”

“Your flight is in two weeks,” Safu said.

“Two weeks?!” Nezumi could feel his blood boiling, and he stood up.

“Yes, there weren’t any tickets available for an earlier flight,” Safu explained. 

“So I’m stuck here for two whole weeks?!” Nezumi asked, trying to emphasize just terrible the situation seemed from his point of view. He never wanted to leave London. He never wanted to come back to Tokyo. He didn’t want to be there, not for so long.

“Stop acting like a spoiled child,” Inukashi said.

“Oh? So now I’m a spoiled child,” Nezumi asked her angrily.

“You weren’t here for eight years, Nezumi. Eight years! I don’t have to make excuses, especially not for you!” She stood up as well, and Safu showed no signs of trying to stop her.

“Good, because I’m not interested in your excuses anyway,” Nezumi said. “I’m just disappointed, that’s all. I thought you were different, but it seems like I was wrong.”

“That’s enough!” Safu yelled.

All three of them knew Nezumi crossed the line, especially Nezumi himself, who felt a small pinch of guilt but brushed it off immediately. Both he and Inukashi sat back in their seats, followed by silence.

“Oh well, it’s not like I need to go back for my job or anything,” Nezumi said, trying to defuse the awkward situation. “It’s summer break, anyway.”

“Everything is good, then.” Safu smiled happily, trying to help. “We’ll arrange a private plane to fly back to Tokyo when you’ll be needed.”

“Oh, so you have a private plane as well?” Nezumi asked with mockery.

“Of course,” Safu answered.

“Then, why can’t it take me back to London?”

“Because it is currently needed for domestic flights, and won’t be available for international ones in the next few months.”

“So why won’t you buy a new one? You surely have enough money, right?” Nezumi asked jokingly.

“Because we don’t need another private plane,” Safu explained. She obviously didn’t get the joke. “And you can’t forget that we would need to hire another pilot. With all due respect, we don’t intend to spend that much money on you, even if we can afford it.”

Nezumi looked at Safu with disbelief.  
“You’re a real blockhead, aren’t you?” He stood up and looked at Safu with a patronizing expression.

“Hey!” Inukashi yelled at him from her seat on the couch, regaining her mood. “Don’t talk to my walking suit like that!”

Safu gave Inukashi a warning gaze and she sank back into the couch.

“For a person whose field of expertise is literature,” Safu smirked, “your insults are pitiful.”

Inukashi grunted, trying to hold in her laughter, but piped down when she received another warning gaze, this time from Nezumi.

“For someone whose field of expertise is wearing suits,” Nezumi responded, “you’re quite rude.”

“Only mirroring your behavior, seeing that basic politeness is beyond your understanding,” she answered.

“Is mirroring the only thing you’re good for?”

“At least she’s good for something!” Inukashi yelled before Safu could open her mouth.

“Oh yeah? What can you do, other than barking?”

“I think I’ll show you your room now.” Safu said, deciding to end the conversation.

“Yes,” Nezumi agreed. “That’d be for the best.”

Again, Nezumi followed Safu throughout the hallways. Because he didn’t recognize any of the paintings on the walls around them, he assumed they were going in a different direction this time. Only halfway through their trip, Nezumi realized how tired he was. _Inukashi hasn’t changed much, has she_ , he thought. That fact made him happy, though he would never admit it or remember it, because in a few minutes he was sleeping soundly, forgetting the walk from the waiting room to his own room.

• • • • • •

Knock knock…

Nezumi wrapped his blanket over his head. Not a single cell in his body wanted to get up. The windows were covered with thick curtains, not allowing a single ray of light make its way inside, and the room had a sweet scent of clean sheets. Nezumi didn’t know what time it was and he didn’t care. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to wake up at an unreasonable hour, stay in bed awake for awhile, then grab a book, read, and go back to sleep, also at an unreasonable hour. He thus decided to ignore that annoying sound that tried to wake him.

Knock knock…

Nezumi groaned and tore himself from bed. He turned on the lights and regretted it almost immediately when he rubbed his eyes, which hadn’t awakened quite yet. The room was too colorful. The curtains, which did their job perfectly by keeping the room dark, didn’t look like black, deformed figures anymore, but like silky rivers of red fabric. The walls were painted in red as well, but it was not as deep as the curtains, which had white, gold and silver patterns embedded on them. The carpet on the floor was somewhere between the deep red of the curtains and the soft red of the walls, but it was still red. _Whoever designed this room had a terrible taste_ , Nezumi murmured in his head. The sheets on his bed were white, at least, but they had delicate decorations embroidered on them. _Incredibly terrible taste_ , he repeated.

Knock knock…

“I’m coming!” he yelled. He strode angrily toward the door and opened it with a similar attitude, facing Safu with a saturnine expression.

“What?” Nezumi did his best not to yell at her, but failed.

“I’m here to wake you up,” she answered, as if it was obvious.

“Well, you did,” Nezumi said. “Now leave.”

“I’m not an alarm clock, you know,” she said. “If my only purpose was to wake you up, I would have sent room service to do it. Or called your room. There are so many ways to wake you up that don’t waste my time or effort.”

“What do you want, then?” Nezumi tried to keep himself from strangling her.

“I don’t really want anything…” Safu stared into the space above Nezumi, trying to think of a better word to explain that she was only doing her job.

“Will you just get to the point?!”

“Yes, of course,” she said, as her train of thought was disrupted. “As part of my duties, I’m supposed to be in charge of your wellbeing during your time in Japan.”

“There’s no need.” Nezumi tried to brush her off and shut the door, but Safu continued persistently.

“I intend to do my duties,” she insisted.

“Not my problem.”

“If you think I won’t make it your problem as well, you’re wrong,” she announced.

“Are you threatening me?” he asked, almost amused.

“If you choose to see it that way, then yes,” she grinned.

“So what do you want?” Nezumi surrendered.

“I already told you, I don’t want any—”

“Yes yes. What is the purpose of this wakeup call?”

“I rented you a car,” Safu explained.

“I don’t need a car. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But I’ve already rented it.”

“So? Cancel the order, then.”

“You don’t understand,” Safu said, frowning. “You will have a car for your visit. It’s part of our hospitality, get it?”

“In that case, the car is just going to rot in the parking lot for two weeks.” Nezumi crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe.

“You’re free to do whatever you want with it.”

“So, why do you need me?”

“Someone needs to get it,” Safu said, speaking as if Nezumi was a child.

“And you’re suggesting that ‘someone’ is me?”

“Exactly.”

“How am I supposed to get there, without a car?” Nezumi questioned her in the same patronizing tone.

“I’ve got it taken care of, but you’ll still need to come in person.” Safu smiled.

“Doesn’t Inukashi have some other suckers to do this stuff for her?” complained Nezumi.

“She does.” Safu answered.

“Then why do I have to go?”

“It’s as you said. She has suckers to do this stuff for her.” Entertained, Safu looked at the angered Nezumi and turned to leave. “Be ready in fifteen minutes.”

Nezumi didn’t need much time to ready himself. He pulled a shirt from his trolley case and grabbed the pants he wore the day before. He entered the bathroom to shower, again cursing Inukashi’s “finest lodging.” Other than the mirror, every single thing in the room was made from white marble with golden decorations. Nezumi bathed as quickly as he could, dressed himself, and left back to the main room with a hurry, as if lingering in the marble room any longer might infect him with some terrible disease.

Nezumi looked at the clock, which hung on one of the walls. He knew he had some time left before Safu would come back to take him from the safety of his room. He held back a sigh. He lay flopped down on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and wondered what he should do in the few peaceful minutes he had left. He straightened up into a seated position. Of course he didn’t want to go with Safu, but because he had to, he wanted her to return as quickly as possible so he could get the whole thing over with. Besides, there was very little he could do in such small amount of time. After what felt like forever but was only a minute, Nezumi got out of bed.

 _Oh well,_ he thought, _if I’m gonna stay here for whole two weeks, I’ll have to organize at some point anyway. And it’s not like I have anything better to do…_

He looked at the room, which was terrifyingly big. By the windows, there were two chairs and a coffee table. There was a door beside them, which Nezumi opened. The room that appeared before him was twice as big as the bedroom. It had a kitchen, a wide table with a few chairs, a sofa, a television, a few shelves, and a desk with a computer on it. Nezumi shut the door. _So the main door goes through the bedroom instead of… whatever that room is_ , he complained. _Who is the idiot who designed this place?_

Nevertheless, he carried his suitcase to the other room. The closet was in the bathroom, but Nezumi’s priorities were different. He stood in front of the shelves in the kitchen/living room/study and began throwing his clothes in different directions until he could reach the books beneath them. He put the books in the shelves carefully, but without any order or logic. Because he brought so many books with him, he managed to put only half of them on the shelves by the time Safu returned.

She led him to the elevator, and pressed the button that said “-3.” After an incredibly awkward elevator ride, they both walked into a huge underground parking lot, which, considering the fact that it was occupied only by luxury cars, probably belonged to Inukashi alone. In the middle was a small, blue car and a man, who leaned against it. He was young, probably about Safu’s age; he had brown hair and beautiful eyes. He was skinny and very pale, and he was wearing casual clothes and a stupid smile on his face.

“Hello,” he smiled. Nezumi was not certain whether the smile was intended for him or Safu.

“Thank you for backing me up again,” Safu said with a sigh.

“No problem,” the guy reassured her.

“Nezumi, this is Shion.” Safu gestured at Shion’s direction. “He’ll take you from here.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said and shook Nezumi’s hand.

“Yeah, let’s just get this over with.” Nezumi pulled his hand back and walked to the car. He sat inside and looked at Shion and Safu, who were too busy with their friendly conversation to pay him any attention. He rolled his eyes, praying for this day to end soon. Eventually, Shion entered the car as well.

He started the car and began to drive it toward the exit, not overwhelmed at all by the awkward silence or Nezumi’s earlier hostility.

“Inukashi said a lot about you.” Shion tried to start a conversation with the person beside him. “Well, maybe not ‘a lot’, she only said you’re a ‘blasted bibliophile with a pretty voice’.”

Nezumi didn’t respond. He was too busy looking outside the window and being as unfriendly as possible so that strange kid would stop talking to him.

“How did you two meet?” Shion tried to keep their very one-sided conversation alive, with little success.

“We went to the same high school,” Nezumi replied, hoping the answer would satisfy the younger’s unexplainable need to talk.

“Oh, you’ve been friends for so long,” he asked with wonder, only angering Nezumi a little more, with both his persistence and his question.

“We’re not friends,” he answered, speaking as coldly as possible. Shion, however, seemed to lack the social understanding that was required to understand Nezumi’s attitude. But then again, Nezumi was the last person to talk about social understanding.

“Sure you are,” he said. “If you’re not friends, why would you come all the way from England?”

“We made a promise. I’m only here to keep it,” Nezumi found himself explaining, although he had no intentions to converse with that airhead just a few seconds ago. He still didn’t have any of these intentions.

Shion giggled.

“What?” Nezumi asked, obviously pissed, and then reminded himself that he didn’t want to talk with that kid.

“It’s just, that I thought you’d be more romantic,” he said with a stupid, wide smile on his face.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know, you came all the way from England, Inukashi is your friend from high school, you’re all serious and cold and stuff…” Shion talked as if he was in his own world.

“It seems like perfect settings for a romantic person. But looks like you’re actually a tsundere.”

“A tsundere?” Nezumi couldn’t help but to tear his gaze from the window and look at Shion. “Your vocabulary isn’t very developed, now is it?”

“Nothing wrong with calling you a tsundere if you’re a tsundere.” Shion insisted. Nezumi looked back at the window.  
“You’re quite queer, you know that?”

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“It wasn’t meant to be nice,” Nezumi said, hoping that this time Shion would be offended and stop talking with him. But he was not.

“You might want to put that tsundere attitude on a leash or something. Someone might take you seriously,” Shion told him.  
“ _That’s the whole purpose_ ,” Nezumi whispered, and then said aloud, “you should do something about your vocabulary, honestly.”

“Only if you’ll do something about your tsundere attitude.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Shion parked the car. “We’re here.”

Shion left the car, Nezumi right after him. They talked with the manager, who brought Nezumi’s new car in a matter of seconds. Nezumi’s day just became worse and worse; his new car was painted gold and had an open roof. Nezumi could swear that Inukashi had told Safu to order that specific car on purpose. _At least I’m not really going to use it_ , Nezumi thought.

“Well, it seems like I can go now.” Shion looked at the new car, satisfied. He pushed a small piece of paper into Nezumi’s hand. “If you need anything, call me.”

Nezumi stared at the little note that contained a series of numbers. _As if I’ll ever call you, idiot._

“Oh, by the way,” Shion called from his own car, which was already started and ready to go. “Safu is too busy with her duties, so she asked me to take over as your babysitter.”

Shion drove away, and Nezumi’s eyes followed the car until it vanished. He was horrified.

 _Oh no_ , he thought.

Nezumi had a feeling that he was going to have a terrible relationship with this guy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… that was the first chapter :D It’ll probably take me a very long time to publish the next chapter… Over a month sort of long time. I’m sorry ^^” Thanks a lot to color2413 (ff.net) who helped me with my English :) See in a month!


	2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nezumi’s adventures in Tokyo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> English is not my native language, I’m sorry for any spelling and/or grammar mistakes that might be ahead.  
> It’s *fan*fiction; therefore--> I’m a fan and not the actual owner of No. 6, or any other piece of work that is mentioned in the story.  
> I know I said a month I’m sorry but hey at least this chapter is super long :D Thanks again to color2413 who helped me with my English:)

Act II: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Nezumi walked to the library with a book in his hand, a daily habit of his. It wasn’t a big library, but it was quiet and it had some books, which was more than what he could find in his house. These factors made the school library the perfect place for Nezumi to be alone in the end of the day.

School was over more than half an hour ago, and for that reason Nezumi was surprised to find a small, tanned figure sitting curled in the corner of the room. Nezumi could recognize this person from miles away: torn male uniform, unkempt hair, slim body. It could only be Inukashi, which only surprised him even more.

He wouldn’t consider himself her friend, and she definitely wouldn’t consider herself his, but he did know her better than the rest of the students. They had only eaten lunch together on the roof a few times, not because he wanted to, but because both of them were famous in a very bad way around school.

They never talked except during their first few meetings, when they fought to determine who would get to eat on the roof. They ended up just eating there together without a word. Other than that, all of Nezumi’s knowledge of Inukashi came from the rumors around school: she was a rebel and the daughter of a rich hotel owner. It was a dangerous background for a teenager in high school; it brought both envy and fear.

Nezumi wasn’t much better than she was, and he was pretty sure he knew what Inukashi heard about him from the same sources. But after hearing the nonsense about themselves, neither of them took the rumors about the other seriously.

“Inukashi?” Nezumi asked. She lifted her head and looked at him, but buried it in her knees again after she identified the caller.

“What are you doing in here?” he tried again, but when he saw that this attempt was also futile, he turned to one of the distant desks in the library.

“Wait,” Inukashi said without looking at him, “are they gone?”

“I assume,” Nezumi said, not really knowing who ‘they’ were, “we’re the only ones in school.” He sat by the nearest desk, his front facing Inukashi but his eyes concentrating on the book.

“You’re not going home?” she questioned, and Nezumi snorted at the sound of the word ‘home’.

“Not until the library closes.”

“Aren’t they going to punish you?” Inukashi asked.

“Not more than yours will punish you,” answered Nezumi. “Mine don’t really care.”

“Mine are used to it, so I’m fine too,” Inukashi said.

Nezumi kept reading, but eventually spoke again, “I’ve never seen you here before.”

“It’s because this is my first time,” Inukashi explained irritably.

“So why are you here today?” asked Nezumi.

Inukashi sighed. “My dad sent some men to get me from school. I had to hide.”

“Any special reason?”

“For him probably, which means it’s bullshit for me.”

“I see.” Nezumi fell silent. After a while, he closed his book and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Inukashi asked.

“Ice cream,” Nezumi mumbled. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

••••••

"Shion!"

 A shout woke Shion from his dreams, tearing him from his thoughts.

"Umm… what?" he mumbled as he tried to regain his awareness.

"Are you listening?" Safu asked in a scolding tone.

"No," Shion admitted. "I'm sorry; what were you talking about?"

"About the story _The Hostess_ , and the conjecture that there is an intelligent race with no physical form living among us," Safu reminded Shion.

"What about it?" he asked.

"That this theory puts the super-natural and god in a very interesting light," she explained.

Shion brought his cup to his mouth and took a sip then asked, "do you mean _The Last Question_ , where god is presented as the remains of a supercomputer created by humans who lived in the universe before ours, which died away?"

"No, I'm still talking about _The Hostess_ ," Safu replied. "It said that the snake from the _Fall of Man_ is actually a reference to that race, and that the snake lost its legs because they were no longer necessary.

"I prefer the theory presented in _All of the Troubles in the World_ ," she continued. "If a supercomputer needs to support all humanity, it will become conscious and then sink into a crushing depression that will lead to its own suicide."

"It's not contradictory," Shion answered.

"How exactly?" Safu asked, receiving no reply from Shion.

"Shion?" Still no response.

"Shion!" Safu yelled, managing to wake him up once more.

"What? Yes," he said, almost automatically.

"You're daydreaming again," complained Safu.

Shion hurried to apologize. "Sorry, what were we talking about again?"

"Whether a supercomputer would commit suicide before developing into a machine with no physical form that we would call 'God'," she reminded him, the second time that day.

"Yes, that," Shion said after regaining his place in the conversation. "Well, to begin with, Multivac was the computer that suffered from depression, not the supercomputer from _The Last Question_. They had probably fixed that problem by then. And in addition, it was said that if Multivac committed suicide, it would take only a few months to fix him."

"How can you possibly fix the fact that all of the problems and suffering of every single person on Earth are gathered into one lone consciousness?" Safu argued, "And besides that, it was also said that the civilization would collapse during these few months because of the dependence on Multivac."

"There must be a way to cure Mutivac's depression," Shion insisted. "It’s probably just beyond our understanding as humans now. And even if the civilization collapsed, some people would survive and carry on their legacy."

Safu picked up her own drink before speaking again, "You can't use these arguments; there’s no way to prove that they're accurate."

Shion stayed quiet.

"Shion?"

Shion didn't answer her.

"Shion!"

"What?" he asked. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

Safu gave him a strange look. "What’s your problem today?"

"There's no problem," he assured her.

"There is," she insisted. "You’re in your own world, more than usual. Analyzing Isaac Asimov's works never bored you before."

"It's not boring!" Shion defended. "I'm sorry; I'll stay focused from now on."

But Safu was not the type to give up easily, especially when Shion was trying to hide things from her. "If it's not boring, why do you space out every five minutes?"

"No reason," Shion lied.

"Both of us know I can insist longer than you can deny, so why won't you save us the trouble and just tell me what's on your mind?"

Shion sighed, Safu was right of course. Safu was always right, at least when it came to him.

"I was just thinking about it and… Nezumi hasn’t called me. Not even once," confessed.

"And your point is…?" Safu asked.

"It's been a week; what if something happened to him?" Shion said with obvious concern.

"I highly doubt it," Safu replied, unmoved. "From what Inukashi told me, the fact that he's not calling is the proof that nothing has happened to him. That's how he is; he likes to be alone."

"No one likes to be alone," Shion countered.

"Debatable," Safu answered.

"No," Shion persisted, "it's not debatable. Humans are social animals."

"There are always exceptions," Safu argued.

Shion took his phone out of his pocket and announced, "and yet, I'm texting him."

"You'll just bother him," Safu said, not really trying to actually stop him.

"I don't care," Shion replied.

"Why does it bother you so much?" Safu asked.

 _Why indeed?_ Shion thought, but he couldn’t come up with an answer. _Scientific curiosity,_ he figured. He was drawn to this new creature in his life, a person unlike anyone else he had met before. This excuse didn’t fit properly, like pants that were a little too small, but Shion chose to go with it until he found a better reason.

"I don't know," he admitted at last, "but it hardly matters, doesn't it?"

Safu smiled and scooted a little closer to Shion.

"I suppose you’ve reached the stage where you decide your logic would be a bad influence on your judgment?"

"Maybe," Shion smiled back.

"If that's the case," Safu said, "do as you wish. Both of us know I can't change your mind when you're at that mode."

••••••

"Nezumi!"

Nezumi stood with his back leaning against the outer wall of a coffee shop that was fifteen minutes away from the hotel by foot. His black hair revealed that he hadn’tshowered in a few days, and he wore the same messy shirt and torn jeans he had worn on his first meeting with Shion because he hadn’t worn anything else besides his pajamas since. He held a faded book in one hand and kept his other hand in the pocket of his jeans. It has been a few seconds before he realized someone was calling him and a few additional seconds before he tore his gaze from the book and bothered to look for whoever called him.

It was Shion. Unlike Nezumi, he looked great. He seemed fresh and energetic, his brown hair was clean and neat, and what stood out most was that he was wearing a suit. Nezumi abandoned his former position to walk toward Shion, who waved happily in his direction.

"You're late," Nezumi grumbled.

"Sorry," Shion apologized between his heavy breaths, "I was delayed a little bit."

"Nice suit," Nezumi remarked, and for a mere second Shion thought it was actually an honest compliment, "but I think you're underdressed for this restaurant. They won't let you into a simple coffee place unless you're wearing at least a tux."

"I was going to change," Shion pouted as they walked to their table, "but I already told you, I was delayed."

"Whatever," Nezumi said as they sat down. They were both silent at first, Nezumi because he didn't care, and Shion because it didn't bother him.

"So," Shion tried to open a conversation the moment the waitress disappeared with their order, "what were you doing this week? Did you travel around in Tokyo?"

"No," Nezumi talked as if to the teaspoon he rolled between his fingers. "I was born here; there isn't much I haven't seen."

"Wasn't there anything you wanted to see again?" Shion questioned.

"Why would I want to see the same place twice?" Nezumi shot back.

"From the look of this book," Shion answered, "you’ve read it more than just twice."

Nezumi pursed his lips and didn't reply. 

"Anyway, why would you bring a book to a meeting?" Shion said.

"Hey, fair is fair," Nezumi exclaimed. “In the end, you were late."

Shion pulled his shoulders. "Not all of us are in summer break, you know."

"Then you shouldn't have set a meeting with someone when you have work," the other complained, but the truth was that he was a little surprised. For some reason, he didn't imagine Shion as a person whose work includes wearing suits, at least until he remembered that Shion was friends with Inukashi's walking suit, Safi, or Sifu, or something like that.

"Well first, I didn't think it would take so long," Shion defended, "and second, it wasn't work, it was an interview."

  1. That was the first thing that went through Nezumi's mind, which perplexed him more than just a little, because he always had something to say or think, no matter what was the subject. But now he was left wordless by a strange feeling of relief and the sudden realization that hit him, and he couldn't say he liked that.



"As what?" Nezumi overcame his confusion almost immediately.

"An engineer," Shion answered.

Nezumi tilted his head to the side a little bit and asked, "of bridges and stuff like that?"

One of Nezumi's less lovable traits was the fact that he wasn't really bad at anything. Even though he specialized in literature, he was still talented in technology and science. That led to bad relations with the math and science teachers in the school where he worked, because all of them hated being proven wrong by a teacher who has nothing to do with the subject.

"Of the environment and stuff," Shion corrected, but saw that Nezumi's slight expression of wonder had became a total loss of understanding, "I specialize in ecological engineering," he explained.

"It sounds like something you just came up with," Nezumi said. His smile seemed slightly sardonic.

"It most certainly is not." Shion’s expression soured.

Nezumi chuckled briefly, still smiling slightly as he leaned his chin on his hand and looked toward the other side of the room. In mere seconds, even that smile vanished, but Shion kept staring at him.

"What?" Nezumi asked after a few moments of silence, which made him feel incredibly uncomfortable even though Shion seemed to have no sense of time.

"Eh?" Shion widened his eyes as if he woke from a dream, then shook his head, blushed a little, and turned his attention to the table. "Nothing."

He couldn't tell Nezumi that in fact, it wasn't nothing, that he found Nezumi’s laughter mesmerizing. Actually, ‘mesmerizing’ wasn't the word he used mentally, but more like 'refreshing like a light wind', or something else that would have caused Safu to roll her eyes and tell Shion to leave the poetic similes to people who do poetry for living and actually know what they're doing. Shion didn't do it much, but when he did, Safu would raise an eyebrow or laugh. Not the mocking sort of laughter, of course. Shion liked Safu's laughter very much, but he couldn’t help but to notice the difference between her laughter and Nezumi's.

Safu's laughter was familiar to Shion. It was honest and hearty, but more than once Shion felt like there was something else—some other feeling he couldn’t name. Nezumi laughter was the exact opposite; rather than hiding something, it felt like it was the first time Nezumi was truly open to him, or at least partially, even if it was only for the short seconds while he laughed.

"You're seriously creepy," Nezumi remarked, and Shion didn't get the chance to defend himself because their coffee arrived.

"What are you planning for the week you have left?" Shion asked.

"Planning?" Nezumi repeated, "Nothing, of course."

Shion pouted. "You have a whole week in Tokyo and you plan to do nothing during that week? Don't you think it's a total waste?"

"I already told you," Nezumi replied, "I was born here. There isn't much to do or see here I haven't done or seen already."

"And I already told you," the younger said irritably, "that it doesn't mean you can't do or see these things again. You say you were born here; don't you have some family or friends to visit?"

Nezumi didn't answer for a while, but eventually he said, "there hasn’t been someone like that in a very long time."

Shion couldn't revive the conversation after that point.

••••••

For over half an hour Nezumi didn't move an inch. He stood with total concentration before the shelves that contained his books, struggling to find a solution for his problem. His flight was in two days, which meant he soon had to pick which books he would carry on and which books he would check as baggage.

Usually Nezumi's challenge was to pick only a small number of books out of his extensive collection, but now, in the midst of his most beloved books, he couldn’t pick even one to entertain him during the flight. He didn't feel an urge to read any of them. It was incredibly frustrating because this was the first time that he had ever faced a problem like that.

Nezumi didn't want to admit it, but he hadn’t been in the mood for reading over the past few days. An observant person would have recognized that this problem began after Nezumi’s last meeting with Shion in the coffee shop. But Nezumi didn't possess these skills, at least not when it came to observing reality, and he preferred to think of other excuses, ones that had nothing to do with Shion.

 _Maybe doing nothing but reading for whole two weeks was a bad idea after all_ _,_ he thought as he flopped onto his bed helplessly. He stared at the ceiling as if staring at it would eventually restore his desire to read. But it didn't—Nezumi waited and waited and no title popped into his mind. He turned onto his belly and reached his last resort: his cellphone.

 **To:** Shion

_I need new books. Where is the nearest bookstore?_

Nezumi preferred not to ask Shion for help, but he wasn't very familiar with the area, so he didn't have much choice. He didn't have much time to regret this decision, because Shion answered in mere seconds.

 **From:** Shion

_Here's the address of the best bookstore nearby the hotel :) Need help? Want me to come along?_

Nezumi sighed. _Why would I need help?_ Then he looked at the map and almost sighed once more.

 **To:** Shion

_It’s not that close_ _._

A moment later, his phone vibrated again.

 **From:** Shion

_It's the best one in anywhere around the hotel… Besides, it’s nothing by car :D_

Nezumi clicked his tongue and reviewed his options. He could drive, but that meant using the hideous car Inukashi got for him. He considered walking, but it took exactly a tenth of a second to discard the idea. Use public transportation of any sort? Not him.

 **To:** Shion

_Could you give me a ride?_

This time Shion took a few minutes to answer, and the waiting bothered Nezumi more than it should have. He pushed that aside when he finally received another answer.

 **From:** Shion

_Sure! Is tomorrow good for you? I can pick you up at 7 :D_

This time, Nezumi had quite a lot of time to regret his decision.

••••••

The ride to the bookstore was nicer than the last time Nezumi and Shion had shared the same car. It was also nicer than their last 'date', where Nezumi was torn from his room after a week without a ray of sunlight or a shower. This time, Nezumi looked much more respectful; he showered, wore new clothes, and brushed his hair properly, which made it the first time Shion was able to look at him thoroughly, as Nezumi hadn’t been at his best when they first met. Shion almost choked on his breath when he first saw Nezumi entering the car; the cleaner version of Nezumi was…well, _beautiful_ was the only word Shion could think of.

Shion kept quiet this time. _Quiet, not silent,_ Nezumi decided, because it created a comfortable atmosphere for both. This surprised Nezumi. After all, Shion was usually talkative, but Nezumi chose not to read too much into it. The atmosphere was far too pleasant and relaxing for Nezumi to bother himself with it, and it seemed like Shion was thinking the same.

When they entered the store, it struck Nezumi that Shion had great taste in bookstores. The store was big but not too big; it was large enough to have an extensive collection but small enough to give a private, intimate feeling. It was quiet and clean, and the only significant light source came from the open windows between the shelves, creating a calm, natural atmosphere.

Most of the books were in Japanese, but Nezumi spotted a section of Foreign Literature and turned to it instantly. Before he managed to take a step towards it, a light touch on his shoulder stopped him.

"You don’t visit Japan every day. Shouldn’t you check out the Japanese sections instead of foreign ones?" Shion's voice came from behind his back.

Nezumi turned around to argue with that arrogant kid who dared to tell him what to read, but the moment he completed his turn and faced Shion he realized he had nothing mean to say to him for his remark.

"The used books section always has some treasures in it," Shion offered, pointing to a few shelves in the other part of the room and then walking to the English section himself. Nezumi grumbled as he walked where Shion directed him.

Shion was right; the used books section did have books of every kind. Some weren't very different from any other book in the store, but others had unique covers or annotations from their previous users. While Nezumi didn’t personally like to make notes in books, he could spend hours reading annotations by others. He found some high Japanese literature, and even a book or two in English, all of them ancient looking, which was Nezumi's greatest weakness when it came to picking books.

He sank in some sort of trance, standing between the full shelves, completely oblivious to his surroundings, until he finally noticed Shion gazing at him as he leaned against the wall.

Shion hasn't seen many people concentrate like this. His mother would do it when she baked. Safu would do it when she faced an incredibly complicated problem at work, or when she heard an interesting idea that she wanted to analyze herself. Safu had said that sometimes he did that too. But for some reason, Nezumi's trance seemed different. 

Shion knew Nezumi specialized in literature, but Shion didn’t know that Nezumi loved books that much; it seemed like he was in a whole different dimension. He was completely isolated, just him and the books. It seemed to Shion that for Nezumi, the rest of the world had simply ceased to exist.

When Nezumi eventually noticed Shion, Nezumi was a bit embarrassed; he couldn't help but wonder how long he had been standing there .

Shion rose from his spot on the nearby wall. "Found anything?"

Nezumi showed him a pile of six books on the floor without a word. "You?"

Shion lifted the book in his hand to show Nezumi its cover. "Safu told me to read this."

Nezumi tilted his head to the side and said, "I thought she was the type to read only paperwork and reports."

"It’s kind of offensive, don’t you think?" Shion remarked and added, "Safu reads more than I do, especially on business trips when she has nothing to do on the plane or at the airport. I don't have much time to read, so she tells me what's worth my time and what isn't."

"How come you have more time than she does?" Nezumi asked, "Isn't she a super-important-business-something?"

"She is, but she's also a genius in… well, everything," Shion explained. "She devotes quite a lot of time to doing, what she calls, 'sitting and waiting for everyone to move their fat asses already'."

"She sounds like a great person," said Nezumi.

Shion snorted. "Like you’re one to talk."

Nezumi ignored his comment, picked yet another book, and scanned it quickly with his eyes.

Nezumi finally bought eight books. After they left the bookstore, Shion asked him if he was really going to read all of these books and Nezumi answered with a dry “of course,” hiding his anticipation.

The return to the hotel wasn't as quiet as trip to the store.

"So, you're going back to London in two days, right?" Shion asked.

"Yes," Nezumi answered without interest, going through one of the books he just purchased. "I'll be flying back the day after tomorrow in the afternoon."

"And when you return," Shion hesitated, "it'll be only to fulfill your promise to Inukashi?"

Nezumi tore his gaze from the book, "Do you know about that?"

"I don’t know what you promised Inukashi," Shion admitted, "but I do know under what circumstances it'll happen."

Nezumi didn't respond, looking back at his book. Shion, however, couldn't bear the silence. "It's sad to think that our next meeting will be under these circumstances."

Nezumi chose to ignore him again.

"Maybe you could stay?" Shion eventually suggested.

"No," Nezumi replied immediately.

Shion insisted, "Why not?"

"Because," Nezumi began, but then fell silent and shut the book in his hands close, "I don’t need to explain myself to you."

Shion sighed. "I want you to stay."

Nezumi made a sound that was either a snort or a short laughter, maybe both on the same time. "Why would you want something like that?"

"I don't need to explain myself to you," Shion answered assertively.

Nezumi mutely stared at him. "Correct," he finally said, "but then I have no reason to listen to you."

"You won’t listen to me anyway," Shion argued.

Nezumi chuckled and agreed. "Also correct, but that way you at least get to try."

Shion was obviously starting to lose it. "It doesn't count as trying if you're not willing to listen."

"I am willing to listen," Nezumi said, "you’re the one who's not willing to talk."

"You're willing to hear, not listen." Shion parked near the hotel. "There's a difference. And you're only hearing me because you have ears, not because you're willing to do it."

Nezumi unfastened his seatbelt and left the car with the books in his hands.

"Think about what I said," Shion said from the open window of his car, and then drove away from the hotel.

“Obnoxious kid,” Nezumi hissed and entered the hotel.

••••••

Nezumi couldn't remember the last time he was so pissed off. Although he bought new books only two hours earlier, he couldn’t concentrate on any of them. When he first noticed these books at the store he couldn't wait to go back to the safety of his room to read them, and now he was re-reading the first paragraph for the fourth time because he couldn’t absorb the words.

_I don't need to explain myself to you._

Nezumi closed his book. _Get the fuck out of my head._ He turned with his back to the ceiling and buried his face in his pillow. He refused to lose to _that_ , to Shion.

 _You're willing to hear, not to listen_ _,_ Shion's voice echoed once again in Nezumi's head.

 _Brat_ _,_ Nezumi sighed into the pillow. _Acting almighty and smart._

Nezumi lifted his face, regaining his ability to breathe properly. He turned in bed once again, this time onto his side, hugging the pillow helplessly.

 _I forgot to ask him whether he got the job or not,_ he thought, his head light with sleepiness. _I wonder if Inukashi would know…_ He shook the idea out of his head; he'd rather die than ask Inukashi something like that. _Safu would probably know._ He didn’t know where this thought came from, because he couldn't ask Safu anyway, but he was too tired to bother himself with that question and it soon disappeared as if it never existed.

 _Shion… met Inukashi through Safu? Or is it the other way around?_ He had to struggle with this question for a while, because he couldn't imagine Shion and Safu becoming friends. But then, he reminded himself, he didn't know anything about Safu. He didn't know anything about Shion, either. This idea bothered him more than it should have.

He couldn't imagine Inukashi and Shion becoming friends either. Inukashi hated children, especially stupid, naïve children like Shion, who had never hated a person before and who couldn’t even imagine her lifestyle. He might have not known Shion, but he knew Inukashi; or at least the person Inukashi was before he moved to England.

 _Maybe he's not that different from me and Inukashi,_ he thought. _Maybe he has a terrible relationship with his parents. Maybe he was bullied as a kid. Maybe he was completely alone. Maybe he would spend as much time as possible away from home. Maybe he doesn’t even have a home._

From there, his thoughts wandered even farther. _Why did he study ecological engineering? What sort of books does he read in his free time? What is his relationship with Safu? Why is he so stubborn? Why won't he go away even when I push him with everything I've got? Why does he want me to stay?_

Slowly, the fact that he was lying in bed and thinking about Shion sank in, and Nezumi felt embarrassed to his bones. He lost to Shion. He lost, and now he was lying in bed and thinking about that stupid brat instead of reading. _Humiliating._

Luckily, Nezumi's pitiful state was disturbed by his phone, which rang once to notify Nezumi that he had received a new text message.

 **From:** Shion

_Because you insist on leaving, I recommend that you spend your last day with Inukashi. I know you're tsundere, but you're also smart enough to know how much this opportunity is worth._

_Is Shion… upset?_ Nezumi wondered, _because I'm leaving?_

He threw the phone on his bed and returned to his former position. He passed the next few minutes in an internal debate, but in the end lost to himself and picked up his phone again. He dialed.

"Nezumi?" a perplexed voice answered.

"Are you available now?" he asked. "I want to talk for an hour or so, face to face, without the presence of your walking suit."  In all of his years, Nezumi met only one person whom he could trust not to pass judgment when Nezumi suffered a moment of weakness, and that person was Inukashi.

"Getting all sentimental now?" she teased, but added hurriedly, "Come to the room where we met on your first day in here."

Nezumi hung up the phone, jumped on his feet, put shoes on, and left the room. It was hard to navigate, mainly because the corridors seemed all the same and the last time he took this route, he could hardly tell his right from his left because he was barely awake, but he found the room eventually.

Just like him, Inukashi also gave the impression that she had just gotten out of bed, which gave Nezumi a nostalgic feeling. He sat on the sofa before Inukashi, his elbows on his knees, and considered how to start the conversation. Inukashi didn't urge him; she knew the process very well and preferred to patiently enjoy the nostalgic feeling herself. She embraced her crossed legs, looked at him, and waited.

"I… I never thought I'd need to keep that promise," he admitted.

"Are you trying to chicken out of this?" she asked with obvious hostility.

"No," he assured, "I just never thought it would happen."

"Is that what's bothering you? Because if I could have done anything about it, I would have done it by now instead of calling you."

"It's one of the things," Nezumi said. "I wasn't around for a while. It feels like we need to catch up a little."

"Ha!" she laughed. "Are you even really interested?"

Nezumi didn't reply and Inukashi snorted. "You do realize I didn't want to take after my father, right?"

Nezumi shrugged his shoulders. "I figured."

"But since my father was quite, umm… famous, it became the talk of the business world," she explained, "and of course, I didn't give a single fuck. But then Safu came. She was fresh meat, just got out of college three weeks before we met. She graduated earlier than she was supposed to and had zero experience. She found me in one of these holes where I used to hide.

"She said that she was new, that she had never done any actual management work before, and that we could learn about the world of business together. She told me that it's fine if we mess up, because I don’t give half a crap about this stupid company. And I sat there, drunk, thinking to myself that it must be the easiest and quickest way to send this company to hell and get rid of it.

"But Safu, damn her, ‘learn about the business world’ my ass! Although I did check over and over again to verify that it _was_ her first job, I’ll bet everything I have that she's one of the top ten in her field in the whole world. She promised to take my father's company down and instead she brought it to a peak that exceeded even my father’s dreams. And the worst? She made me show interest in the company."

Nezumi smiled.

"And you?" Inukashi asked. "What have you been up to during these eight years?"

"Nothing," he said. "I specialized in the field I love, I found a bearable job, and, well, lived. Nothing like the excitement you went through."

"And I assume you've done nothing but reading in the past two weeks."

Nezumi silently verified her assumption by nodding.

Inukashi took a deep breath and suggested, "what about showing her your respect?"

Nezumi turned his gaze away. "She wouldn't be happy to know I think a piece of stone has some importance just because it’s near her body and has her name on it."

"So you just sat in your room for two weeks like the bibliophile you are?" she asked with disbelief.

"Your doghouse is comfortable," he answered, "although I did get out twice because that airheaded friend of your walking suit dragged me out."

Inukashi laughed. "Yes, that’s Shion for you."

"How is he even connected to you and Safu?" Nezumi couldn’t stem his curiosity.

"They've been friends for years," Inukashi explained. "I don't know all of the details because Shion doesn’t like talking about it, but it looks like Safu saved him from bullies as a kid."

 _So he wasn't raised on a silver platter after all,_ Nezumi thought.

"I can't see why anyone would want to bully him though," Inukashi wondered. "Sure, he's freaking annoying sometimes, but not enough to be bullied for it. He's like a puppy you just want to wrap in a blanket 'cause he's a total airhead."

 _Shion… a puppy?_ Nezumi cursed Inukashi because he knew this similarity would never leave his mind, ever. "More like ‘strangle him with a blanket’, but I'll admit I can't see a big group of kids bugging him because of that attitude."

Inukashi made a sour expression. "Strangling Shion? What else do you have on that list? Burning kittens? Kicking puppies? Drowning bunnies?"

"Let's agree to disagree," Nezumi decided.

"Alright," Inukashi agreed, "what did you guys do together?"

"We had coffee and bought some books. Well, I was the one that asked for the books," he admitted.

"And knowing you," Inukashi said with a ridiculously wide smile, "you weren't charmed by the naïve airhead attitude?"

"I don't like his type," Nezumi complained.

"You don't like any type," Inukashi corrected.

Nezumi crossed his hands over his chest. "He's irritating. Why do you hang out with him?"

"If you'd spend some time just getting to know him, you'd understand," explained Inukashi.

They both fell silent, and Nezumi considered what she said.

_I want you to stay_ _._

Nezumi took out his phone and looked at it.

_I know you're tsundere._

Nezumi thought for a moment and then typed. 

"We'll see about that," he told Inukashi.

"About what?"

"About Shion."

 **To:** Shion

_I told you, stop calling me tsundere_ _._

"Cancel my flight," he said, "I'll stay until I’ve fulfilled my promise."


	3. The Drunkard’s Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nezumi and Shion's ordinary life after Nezumi decided to stay in Tokyo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for ahiku, lawlya, Shinwa-Tsuki, Yoshioka Ai, brendainhogwarts for the reviews on either ff.net or ao3! I'm sorry it took so long. (rest of the apologies in the end of the chapter). As always, a special thanks for color2413 (ff.net), who saved my fic once again from my English skills.

Act III: The Drunkard’s Dream

It had been three months since Nezumi decided to stay in Tokyo. The school year started long ago, and Nezumi had to quit his job as a teacher and replace it with a new one as a translator. It wasn’t a fascinating job; most of the files he got to translate were utterly boring, but he did it anyway. His official reason was that he refused to be dependent on Inukashi, but in reality, he worked because he was completely bored.

He worked in his room, leaving only to buy food or books or to meet with Shion occasionally. Not much has changed in Nezumi’s opinion; his life was still quite uneventful. The only difference was that instead of teaching entire classes, he tutored Shion a bit. It was Shion’s idea, like most of the activities in Nezumi’s current life. Shion spoke English fluently, but he had never gotten around to reading important pieces of literature in the language. Nezumi couldn’t quite say that he enjoyed teaching Shion; he was insufferably curious, which made their pace incredibly slow, but Nezumi got used to it after a while. None of his students ever showed so much interest and in a way, Nezumi grew fond of Shion’s nature.

Shion enjoyed their sessions from the very beginning. Yes, he was grateful for the opportunity to learn, but mostly for the opportunity to meet with Nezumi. Although their meetings were strictly for learning and nothing more, Shion managed to open Nezumi up little by little. It was a hard process. At first Nezumi refused to answer even the most trivial questions such as “how was your day?” and “what are you working on right now?” Slowly, Nezumi gave in, answering with polite short sentences, never showing any interest in the other party.

Later Nezumi gave more sincere answers, telling Shion about his work and life in more detail, and sometimes he even listened to Shion as he spoke about the same subjects. Yet they kept their chatting to a minimum, leaving their sessions primarily for studying. After a while, Shion decided to invite Nezumi to watch a play with him at a local theater.

“For school purposes,” he justified. “I want to watch Shakespeare, not just read it.”

And so they went on a play, ’Romeo and Juliet’, after which Shion had to sit and listen to Nezumi complain for a whole hour about the acting and the translation to Japanese. Shion decided to mark that day as a turning point. For the first time, Nezumi‘s lectures expressed his own opinion instead of other people’s interpretations. The thought made Shion smile to himself, but Nezumi was too busy complaining to notice.

From then on, it became a routine. Nezumi taught Shion a few times a week, and almost every weekend they went to watch a play or sometimes a movie. Occasionally, they visited a museum. Nezumi never even noticed the shift in their relationship throughout these months, and Shion decided it was probably better that way.

Shion fondly caressed the little sticky notes on the side of his copy of ‘Hamlet’. One of the many little things Shion has learned about Nezumi during their sessions was that he refused to write on books directly, a habit that left Nezumi’s books covered almost completely with colorful notes between their pages.

“Look at this one,” Nezumi pointed. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

Nezumi began to explain the importance of that specific quote, but Shion wasn’t listening anymore.

“You know,” he said, “I think this was the first time I heard you speak English.”

Nezumi stifled a sigh, openly irritated that Shion had stopped listening. “What about it?”

“Your accent,” Shion wondered, “it’s not Japanese. Not British either.”

“I lived in the United States for the first six years of my life,” Nezumi said matter-of-factly.

“Really?” Shion asked with amazement. “Your Japanese is amazing!”

“As I said, it was only for six years,” Nezumi replied.

“Six years is a long time,” Shion insisted, “especially when it’s the first six years of your life.”

“My grandmother was quite frantic about my Japanese, actually,” he admitted. “She refused to converse with me in English. She also made sure I learned writing and reading in Japanese and English at the same time so I wouldn’t know one language better than the other.”

“That sounds hard,” remarked Shion, “but at least it worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Nezumi agreed and tried to pull back to ‘Hamlet’, only to be disturbed by Shion again.

“What were you doing in the U.S.?” he asked.

This time Nezumi did sigh. “My grandmother lectured about nuclear weapons. We traveled all over the place, never staying in the same place for over a month. In the end she decided her efforts were futile, and we moved back to Japan.”

“It was only you and your grandma?” Shion immediately regretted asking such an intrusive question, but Nezumi didn’t seem to mind.

“Yeah,” he answered monotonously, “I never met my parents. It’s not a big deal though, because I don’t know what it’s like to live with that sort of thing, so it’s never really bothered me.”

Shion scratched the back of his head awkwardly, feeling as if he had crossed some sort of invisible line. “I never knew my father either,” he told Nezumi, as if to return the favor, “so I guess we’re the same in that regard.” Then he laughed. It was a short awkward chuckle, which gave Nezumi the feeling it wasn’t so funny and that he probably shouldn’t pry into the subject any further.

Their lesson went on until Shion’s phone rang.

“Da?” he answered, and Nezumi knew by then that Russian meant Safu. Shion once told him that Safu learned a new language whenever she had business with a new country, and because she was a genius, she ended up speaking that language semi-fluently and sometimes even better than that. Nezumi lost count of the languages Safu could speak, but Shion, with his incredible memorizing skills, could chant them in both alphabetical and chronological order as easily as he could recite his phone number or address.

That revealed to Nezumi why Safu spoke Russian, but Shion never explained why he could speak it as well. Nezumi tried to ask once, but Shion avoided the question so gracefully Nezumi had only realized the next night that he hadn’t gotten an answer.

The conversation went on for awhile, and Nezumi sat quietly and listened to the foreign language until Shion hung up the phone and said, “Safu is back from her business trip; she wants to meet downstairs at the hotel’s coffee shop.”

Nezumi only nodded slightly and waited for Shion to pack his things before they left the room and headed for the elevator. He had gotten used to being around Safu a lot, because being friends with Shion evidently required it. Nezumi figured that it worked the other way around too, because Inukashi seemed to befriend Shion through Safu.

They met downstairs as promised.

“Shion!” Safu waved from the table she picked for them, and the two joined her.

“Hey Safu,” said Shion before sitting next to her.

“Walking suit,” teased Nezumi, acknowledging her existence.

“Ice queen,” Safu replied with her own nickname for Nezumi.

Shion hurried to prevent the conversation from deteriorating further. “So, how was your trip?”

“The usual,” Safu said, waving her hand nonchalantly. “You working on anything special?”

“Not really,” replied Shion.

“How’s Inukashi doing?” she asked. It was a completely unnecessary question, as every medical report regarding Inukashi went through Safu before Inukashi got it.

“She’s fine,” Shion said. “Nezumi and I went to visit her in the hospital every once in a while.”

Safu smiled. “Yeah, she told me,” she said, and then gave Nezumi a sad stare.

Shion looked at both of them awkwardly until his phone rang and he got up to answer it.

“Excuse me,” he apologized, “I need to get this.”

He left the table, giving Nezumi and Safu some time alone, something that enthused neither of them.

“Do you know,” Safu spoke eventually, “what I used to do to people who hurt Shion?”

Nezumi didn’t respond to that out-of-the-blue question. He only looked at Safu’s direction, and she decided to take his silence as an invitation to say more.

“I kneed them in the balls,” she said, and Nezumi, even more puzzled than before, stayed still, making no sound.

“You will not be an exception,” she added, just before Shion joined them once more.

“Sorry, that was work,” he apologized again.

_What was that about?_ Nezumi wondered.

“What did they want?” asked Safu, as if the conversation between her and Nezumi never happened.

“One of my coworkers is getting married, so he’s inviting us to a bar not far from here tonight,” he explained.

“Whoa!” Nezumi covered his mouth with his hands with cynical shock. “Shion the party animal.”

“Very funny,” Shion pouted, and Nezumi couldn’t help but to grin with satisfaction.

“Nezumi is jealous because he was never invited to parties,” Safu taunted, receiving a piercing glare from Nezumi.

“And I’m sure you were always super-popular,” he replied. “Everyone wants a walking suit at their party.”

“Nezumi, Safu,” Shion begged, “please don’t.”

But it was too late. Nezumi and Safu were already too busy with their teasing match to listen.

• • • • • •

Nezumi sat by the table in his room, working on whatever it was that he needed to for work. It was a lazy day for him, and he enjoyed the leisure of the normal routine. Nezumi typed quietly, his eyes moving from the original copy to the screen, then his watch, then the screen at amazing speed. He took a deep breath and stretched. Time seemed frozen to him. He couldn’t decide whether it was the document he was translating or the itch to do something else, which he had felt ever since he had sat down to work.

He stood up to get a drink, hoping that somehow it would alleviate his boredom. On his way back to his desk, his wish came true: his ringtone broke the silence of the room, making his heart skip a beat when he saw Shion’s name on the screen.

“Hey, I thought you were out with friends,” Nezumi answered, speaking in the most irritated tone he could muster.

“Are you Nezumi?” an unknown voice answered, and Nezumi felt his heart sink.

“Who are you?” he asked immediately. “Where is Shion?”

“He’s fine, man, just listen for a second,” replied the voice calmly. “I’m his coworker and we went to a bar together. I just need you to pick him up. I… I don’t think he can drive home.”

Nezumi was too relieved to be mad about Shion’s getting himself drunk, but the thought still crossed his mind as he sat in his car and drove to the address that coworker sent him. It was a small bar, but it seemed clean enough. Nezumi grumbled to himself as he walked inside and found Shion sitting at a table with a guy that seemed to be the caller.

“Thanks bro,” the man said and patted Nezumi’s back a little too hard. “He’s fine, you see?”

“Well, well—isn’t that my pampered Prince, drunk as a skunk?” teased Nezumi the moment the other guy left the bar.

Shion gave him a sour look. “I’m not that drunk,” he replied.

“Drunk enough so that another person had to call me so I could pick you up,” Nezumi argued, and gestured to him to get up so they can get going.

“I’m not that drunk,” Shion repeated. He then tried to get up, but stumbled and fell right into Nezumi’s arms.

“Not that drunk, eh?” Nezumi smiled. “You can’t even walk straight! My, do I need to carry you to the car, my Prince?”

Shion pushed Nezumi away and straightened up. “I’m fine,” he mumbled as he staggered toward the exit.

Nezumi grinned as Shion struggled to open the door of the car, fell into the seat by the driver, and then tried stubbornly to buckle his seat belt without Nezumi’s help. They drove without a word other than Shion’s instructions, the smell of alcohol permeating the car. Shion proved that indeed, he was not totally wasted. His vision was a little fuzzy and he took a while to tell Nezumi when to turn, but finally they arrived Shion’s apartment without much trouble.

They both went out of the car and into the building, where Shion, as if to prove a point, insisted on pressing the correct button in the elevator without Nezumi’s help. When they reached the floor where Shion’s apartment was, Shion walked clumsily toward a simple, brown door, where he fumbled for his keys in his pocket and then invited Nezumi inside.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he announced. “Make yourself at home.”

“Don’t you need help?” teased Nezumi, receiving a grumpy look and the third “I’m not that drunk” of that night.

With loud steps, Shion disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Nezumi in a room that seemed to be both the kitchen and the dining room. It had little furniture: only necessities for cooking, a small table, and two chairs. There were three doors that led outside of the room: the apartment’s entrance, the door through which Shion had disappeared, and the third, which Nezumi assumed led to the bedroom.

Through the wall, Nezumi heard water running. He decided that nothing would come from his standing in the middle of the room, so he might as well sit. He moved toward the table, where the chairs were, but froze when he saw a magnetic board with pictures of Shion above it. He stood closer to get a better look.

There was a picture of Shion and Safu standing next to each other. It seemed like the picture was less than a few years old, probably taken when Shion still attended college. Safu was already wearing her typical suit.

_Right,_ Nezumi thought, _Shion did mention Safu’s graduating early._

There was another one, which also seemed quite new. It was a picture of Safu, Shion, Inukashi, and an older woman sitting by a dining table. The woman, Nezumi assumed, was either Shion’s or Safu’s mother. She smiled a warm, hearty smile at the camera, and Nezumi decided to ask Shion about her identity when he came out of the shower.

The third picture was older, much older. It appeared to be Shion, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, lying in a hospital bed, wrapped in bandages up to his throat, smiling as if nothing had happened. Safu, seemingly at the same age, sat next to his bed, looking obviously concerned, unlike Shion. The strangest thing about the photo, however, was the fact that Shion’s hair was white.

The last picture was the oldest. It had the woman from the other picture, a baby, who seemed to be Shion, and a man. Judging by the way they stood together, Nezumi concluded that the woman really was Shion’s mother and that the man was probably his father, the one that Shion was unable to remember. It was obvious from the man’s features that he was not Japanese. In this picture too, Shion had white hair, but this time, next to his dad, it seemed obvious where it had come from.

“Nezumi?” Shion’s voice startled Nezumi, who was too engrossed with the pictures to notice that the water had stopped running.

Nezumi turned around to comment about the pictures, but the moment he turned around his mouth went dry. Shion was standing there, dripping wet, covered only by a towel. Nezumi’s heart jumped to his throat, and he almost missed the fact that Shion’s hair was suddenly white, and that he had a weird, red stripe coiled around his torso.

“I forgot to take clothes,” he apologized, and then strode to the door, which Nezumi guessed was the one that led to the bedroom. Nezumi stood and stared blankly at the said door. After a moment, Shion emerged again, wearing a loose T-shirt and pants and holding the towel in his right hand. His white locks were still wet and they dripped water onto his shirt, which didn’t quite cover the stripe that coiled up to his neck.

“Um…Eh…” Nezumi tried to speak but couldn’t find any words.

“Say, could you drive me to that bar tomorrow morning?” Shion asked casually. “I need to pick up my car.”

After a moment of silence, Nezumi managed to pick himself up.

“Your hair…?” he said almost inaudibly. After the first moment of shock, Nezumi realized his hair wasn’t white, it was very, very pale blond.

“My hair?” Shion repeated, confused.

Now it was Shion’s turn to panic. He looked from side to side helplessly, as if searching for a hiding place. Eventually, he realized he couldn’t find one and settled on covering his head with the towel and curling into a ball-like stance.

“Shion?” Nezumi bent next to him, putting his hand on his shoulder.

_He’s shaking,_ he thought sadly, trying to understand what made Shion react the way he did.

Shion said nothing. He kept squatting and shaking, praying that a mouth would open up in the floor and swallow him right there and then.

“Shion, what’s wrong?” Nezumi tried again, in vain.

He was helpless. He didn’t know what made Shion act like that, and he didn’t know what to say to make it better.

“Shion listen to me,” he attempted once more, still achieving no results.

Finally, Shion calmed down, and looked up to Nezumi.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, “but you should probably go home now. I’ll be fine and… It’s kind of late. You probably want to be back home so—”

“No,” Nezumi interrupted, and Shion’s head sank back to his knees.

“Please,” he begged, “please leave. I don’t want you to see this.”

“See what?” questioned Nezumi. “Your hair? I see it every day.”

“Not like this,” Shion insisted, burying his face even farther.

“So what?” Nezumi pressured. “What’s wrong with the way it is now?”

“You know what’s wrong!” Shion exclaimed, and Nezumi abandoned any hope that this conversation would lead somewhere. Instead, he chose a less sensitive way to persuade Shion to open up to him.

“Shion,” he said softly, “you said you don’t remember your father, right?”

Shion froze.

“Do you have any idea where he might be right now?” asked Nezumi, trying to see how far he could stretch Shion’s limits.

Shion consider the question, then answered with a dry, defeated voice, “his homeland, probably.”

Nezumi grinned. “Which is where?”

“Russia.”

It was the only answer Nezumi needed.

“I suppose you haven’t run across many people who were fond of foreigners.”

Shion shook his head. “There’s my mom, of course, and Safu. Inukashi too.”

“But you know,” Nezumi spoke softly while drawing calming circles on Shion’s back with his palm, “that I grew up outside of Japan, right? And that I also lived the past few years in a foreign country.”

Slowly, reason returned to Shion. After a while, they both sat by the small table, drinking hot chocolate. Then, Shion told Nezumi the whole story.

“I don’t really know how my parents met,” he admitted, “but I do know that my mom wound up moving to Russia with my dad. They lived together for awhile, and eventually I was born. About three months after that, my dad left without a word. My mom stayed in Russia for three years after that, hoping that he might come back one day. But he didn’t.

“My mom never really liked living in Russia,” Shion continued, planting his gaze in the hot chocolate in his hands, “so naturally she came back to Japan. We lived in a small town, where most of the people hadn’t ever seen a foreigner. I attracted attention, and very negative attention at that. I was bullied, a lot. My mom wasn’t doing much better; no one wanted anything to do with a woman who left with a foreigner and came back with her tail between her legs, but eventually, she earned enough money and we moved to Tokyo.

“In Tokyo, my mom’s life changed for the better. Foreigners were a common sight in a big city, and almost no one bothered to question her about her whereabouts. But it was harder to hide my appearance, and kids aren’t as understanding as adults when it comes to this sort of thing. I was bullied, less frequently, but still bullied. Luckily, I met Safu, who grew overseas, so for her, I wasn’t that weird at all. She fought anyone who tried to bully me, and she was quite capable, so it worked for a fairly long time.

“Until this happened,” Shion touched the end of the red mark around his neck. “It wasn’t the first time bullies got carried away, but it was the first time I was actually admitted to a hospital for awhile because of it. I never came back to that school; after that incident, my mom had me transfer, and Safu transferred with me. I started dying my hair and wearing makeup to hide the scars. I started anew, and ever since, I lived peacefully. The end.”

Nezumi said nothing for a while. There was nothing he could have said. _I’m sorry? I wish I had been there to protect you?_

“Of course Safu knows my story already, but this is the first time I’ve told someone else,” Shion smiled awkwardly, trying to melt the silence. He stood up and took his and Nezumi’s cups to the sink.

“Well then,” Nezumi clapped once and stood up as well, “I guess you’ll be fine now.”

“I will, thank you,” replied Shion, and Nezumi had to admire how quickly he recovered from this scene. He walked toward the door, Shion following.

“Thank you for listening,” he said before Nezumi left.

“No problem. And,” Nezumi added, “I’m sorry if I forced you to speak about something like that.”

Shion shook his head. “I feel better now that you know, really. Also,” he smiled, “whenever you’ll decide to tell me your story, I’ll listen. It’s a promise.”

Nezumi grunted. “What makes you think I have a story?”

“Inukashi said you have one.”

“She did?”

_Reminder to self: kill Inukashi later._

“She did.”

Now, Nezumi was outside of the door, ready to leave.

“Nezumi?”

He turned around to look at Shion, but instead received a light brush of Shion’s lips on his own.

“Good night,” Shion smiled one last time and closed the door.

“Good night,” Nezumi mumbled, standing still. Then he smiled and turned around, walking away from Shion’s apartment.

“Good night,” he repeated. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about many things with this chapter but to keep it short I'll focus on the main two and a half: I'm sorry it took so long. Like really, super long. I'll try to make sure that won't happen again. Also, I'm sorry that the reason for Shion's hair and make absolutely no sense (and it wasn't even white) and that I probably offended every Japanese person in the world when I spoke about treatment toward foreigners.


	4. Taming of the Shrew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always I must give a huge amount of credit to color2413. Also, Yoshioka Ai asked about Shion's hair: his hair is not white in this AU, it's blond, and it's his natural color. I don't think it makes much sense, but I needed to come up with something so...

Act IV: Taming of the Shrew 

Nezumi ate his lunch on the school building’s roof while reading a book. It was nothing out of the ordinary; both Nezumi and Inukashi ate their lunch there every day, although neither of them considered that activity as ‘eating together’ because they rarely spoke.

Considering the nature of their relationship, Inukashi’s absence shouldn’t have worried Nezumi nearly as much as it did. Yes, they talked very little and only about meaningless things, yet Nezumi knew Inukashi well enough to notice that missing school for so many days in a row was strange for her.

Nezumi and Inukashi had a lot of things in common, which was the only reason they spent all of their lunches together. Both of them were widely known around school in a very bad way; both of them had at least one shitty parent, and both of them had a house, yes, but none of them had a home.

These were similarities that connected them to each other only because these similarities separated them from the rest. They didn’t need words to understand one another; they just knew how the other felt and what they thought, simply because they lived exactly the same way.

Lunch was almost over when Nezumi stood up and stretched. He picked up his book and what was left of his lunch, and headed to the classroom downstairs. Nezumi didn’t like being in school. He didn’t like his fellow students; he didn’t like his teachers; most of the materials were boring; and all in all, the place was terribly noisy.

But it was better than his ‘home’, where he had to sit in his room silently from the moment he came back from school and until he left the next morning. Anyway, there wasn’t much noise to make in that place. There were maids and servants, but they were too afraid to talk with him. There were his foster parents, too, but they never talked to him unless they wanted him to show up for some high-social class event they were about to attend so they can show how generous they were for helping a lost little boy like him.

Inukashi’s father was the same, except that he was Inukashi’s biological father, and there were many more events that he wanted Inukashi to attend so that he could show her off. At least Inukashi had one good soul to protect her, her mother, but she had little influence on Inukashi’s dad, so there was just so much she could do to make Inukashi’s life easier.

Knowing Inukashi’s household, Nezumi couldn’t take her absence lightly. Even if Inukashi was sick, she would rather come to school than to spend time alone at her father’s fancy house with the servants and maids who feared her or tried to win her favor for their personal gain.

Inukashi and Nezumi were both alone; they were nothing more than dolls in a showcase made from gold and silver. School was hard, but it was the only place where they could escape the glass walls and the probing eyes of their parents, and that was worth more than anything in the world to them.

After what seemed like forever, the school day was over, and Nezumi, after spending as much time as possible in the library, walked ‘home’. It was a long walk and his parents had said that they would send a car to pick him up if he wanted, but Nezumi preferred to spend as much time as possible away from them and the place they call home. It has been the same ever since his grandma died. The moment he set foot in the household, he knew he was only there as an ornament.

He dropped his bag in the corner of his room, which was small but well designed, and fell into bed. He felt too restless to read but there was very little else he could do, so after picking up a book and reading two pages, he gave up and turned on the TV. He flipped through the channels quickly, finding nothing on that he would consider entertaining, until he finally found some sort of a news channel and figured it would be the least boring thing he could find.

It was still pretty boring, and Nezumi was about to turn the TV off and call it a day, but he stopped the moment he heard the anchor saying the name of Inukashi’s dad.

“A few hours ago, the company received a set of incredibly disturbing pictures of the CEO’s wife and daughter, showing the two as hostages. The company admits that they both went missing a few days ago but to prevent panic, their disappearance was kept secret until today. Even now, with these photos, the people behind this act have yet to state their demands. The entire story by…”

Nezumi stopped listening as soon as the pictures were shown on the screen. It was Inukashi and her mom, no doubt. One picture showed them both tied to metal chairs, gagged with dirty pieces of cloth and covered with bruises. The next showed only Inukashi’s face, who wasn’t gagged this time. Her chin was violently restrained to position her so she could be identified unambiguously. The next picture served the same purpose for her mom, except that she was held by her hair.

Nezumi didn’t go to school for the next week. His ‘parents’ didn’t really mind. He spent the first few days searching every corner of the internet, trying to find more information about Inukashi and her mother. He found more photos that weren’t on TV, mostly photos of Inukashi’s mom. One showed her arm’s being bent in at an unnatural angle, and another showed her other arm broken and bruised. There were photos that showed the condition of her legs, back, and face, which weren’t much different. There was a video too, where a group of guys kept kicking her, again and again, and Nezumi swore that he could here Inukashi’s muffled cries behind her mother’s. 

Eventually the kidnappers stated their demands, but other than more and more photos of Inukashi’s mother appearing on the internet, nothing happened. Nezumi almost lost hope. In the newest pictures, Inukashi’s mom was dying, and Nezumi knew that once the kidnappers realized that their methods were ineffectual and that their current toy was already broken, they would move to the next one. He spent these days lying in bed, feeling more helpless than he ever felt in his life.

Finally, a miracle happened. The police found the perpetrators and rescued Inukashi and her mom. The moment it happened, Nezumi rushed to the hospital where they were being treated, feeling the happiest and yet the most terrified he had ever felt in his life.

• • • • • •

“Nezumi.”

“Mmm…”

“Nezumi, wake up, it’s late.”

“Um… mmm.”

“Come on Nezumi, we promised my mom we’ll be there by eleven.”

Nezumi covered his head with the sheets. “Five more minutes,” he murmured.

“You always say that but you never wake up,” Shion argued and ripped the sheets off of him, then started poking his cheek. “Nezumi, wake up. Go on, open your eyes now. I’m waiting.”

Annoyed, Nezumi shut his eyes harder. He wrapped his arm around Shion and brought him closer, effectively locking him against his chest and preventing him from poking him any farther.

“Let go!” Shion struggled in his hold, but Nezumi refused to release him. “If you have the energy to play games, you have the energy to wake up.”

Nezumi hummed in agreement but kept hugging Shion. Because Shion always had to leave early for work, they rarely got to cuddle while enjoying the warmth of each other’s naked bodies, although it might be difficult to call Nezumi’s tight grip and Shion’s endless struggle a cuddle.

After a month of sharing a bed in Shion’s apartment or Nezumi’s room, Nezumi became used to Shion’s ‘late’ threats. They were hopelessly ineffective, and Shion arrived late to work about twice a week because Nezumi had a tendency to trap Shion in his arms and beg him to take a day off. Luckily, nobody in Shion’s workplace noticed, and even if they did, they didn’t mind. Anyway, most of the workers were late almost every day.

“Seriously, let go,” Shion ordered again, in vain. Then Shion turned to his final resort.

“Ow!” Nezumi immediately released Shion to hold his own nose. “You bit me!”

“I warned you!” Shion sat up next to him and gave him a look that was both irritated and satisfied.

“Did not,” claimed Nezumi. “You asked me to let go of you; you said nothing about the consequences of my refusing to do it.”

Shion mimicked Nezumi mockingly then said, “just get dressed.”

“Look who’s talking,” Nezumi said, examining Shion’s naked back as he stood in front of his closet to choose his clothes.

“Just get dressed,” Shion repeated, then got dressed himself. Watching Shion when he was too distracted to notice that his scars were exposed had become one of Nezumi’s favorite activities, so he decided to keep at it instead of complying with Shion’s demands. Then again, a lot of things had became “one of Nezumi’s favorite activities” in the short period of time they were dating, and most of them were more… physically demanding than watching Shion getting dressed.

As Shion finished shoving all of his bright locks into a wool hat, he looked behind him to see that Nezumi hadn’t gotten dressed yet because he was too busy staring at him.

“Come on Nezumi,” he pleaded, “we’re late.”

“Okay, okay, I’m getting dressed,” Nezumi sighed. As Shion got out of bed, he went to the desk in the corner of his room and took out his laptop.

“I’m going to check my e-mail,” he announced as he left the room, “you have five minutes.”

Nezumi smiled as he watched Shion walk away. Spending most of his nights with Shion became a regular thing, and Nezumi was too drunk with happiness to realize how happy he actually was. It was as if his personality had been transformed, yet he hadn’t even noticed the change. Shion was almost like an extra limb; he was Nezumi’s everyday life; he was the air he breathed and the blood in his veins; he was part of Nezumi’s reality.

And the most amazing thing about it was that Nezumi never questioned it. He could hardly remember that Shion used to be just an incredibly annoying kid that Inukashi had driving him around. He knew where their relationship started and where it was at the moment, and he knew what they had gone through to get there. But he never realized just how great the change was; he never realized how different his life was from only a few months ago in England.

Nezumi never wondered what type of person Shion must be, a person who could turn his whole world upside-down in a few months _without Nezumi’s even noticing_.

When Nezumi finished dressing, more than five minutes had passed since Shion left to check his e-mails. _Weird,_ Nezumi thought, remembering all of the times when Shion bugged him every thirty seconds to see if he was done already. His nagging became especially unbearable when they were about to be late to Karan’s place, which was another one of Nezumi’s new favorite activities.

Shion never dyed his hair on days where they went to visit Karan’s bakery because Karan loved Shion’s natural hair color almost as much as Nezumi did. She accepted his decisions, of course, especially when these decisions were meant to protect him, but Shion felt a strange obligation to appear before his mother as he was. Nezumi never complained. Obviously, he loved every second he could spend looking at Shion’s hair.

And there was the matter of meeting Karan herself. She was nicer and warmer than any person whom Nezumi had ever met, perhaps other than Shion, and she seemed like the “perfect mother” Nezumi had never had. That lack of experience didn’t prevent him from feeling cozy and comfortable around her, sensations he wasn’t very familiar with either, but it also caused a slight nervousness he couldn’t shake whenever he was around her. Other than that, Nezumi loved being around Karan, and he understood very well why it was so important for Shion.

Nezumi rushed to the kitchen when he realized Shion had not nagged him in the past few minutes, only to see him sitting frozen before his computer screen.

“Shion?” he touched his shoulder to catch his attention, and Shion gave him an empty and slightly perplexed look, as if he didn’t have enough time to be fully confused yet. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Shion answered quietly, “it’s just a mail from work.”

“Did something happen?” asked Nezumi.

Shion shook his head. “Not anything bad,” he assured him. “We sent a project design to a company in the United States few weeks ago, and they just told us they liked it.”

“That’s great!” Nezumi smiled. “It is great, right?”

“It is,” Shion confirmed, still not looking completely focused, “it’s a great opportunity for our company. There’s just one thing…”

“What is it?” Nezumi lowered himself to look at the message on Shion’s laptop. He skipped to the second paragraph and began to read it:

_We’re pleased to inform you that as one of the heads of this project, you will be supervising the building of your design. The buyers have already arranged a two-month visa—_

“They need me to be there when they build the project,” Shion interrupted. “They want me to go to the United States.”

• • • • • •

Nezumi tapped his pen on the table restlessly. Although it was the early afternoon, which was usually the perfect time for him to work, he hadn’t been able to get any work done. In fact, Nezumi had been unable to get any work done at all in the past three weeks. His boss didn’t like Nezumi’s lack of productivity, of course, and he had received a couple of warnings by now, but nothing had changed the fact that Nezumi simply couldn’t sit down and work.

He blamed it on Shion. Every night, before he went to sleep, Shion would call Nezumi and tell him what happened to him that day. For Shion, it had little effect on the rest of the day, because it was night in his time zone, but for Nezumi it had become a major distraction that he couldn’t afford but couldn’t live without.

Nezumi leaned back in his chair and sighed. He didn’t want to do anything, especially not his job. He decided to get up and walk around his room as if it would give him some ideas. _I could visit Karan,_ he thought, _she’s always nice._ He considered the option but decided to discard it. As nice as Karan was, she still made him a little nervous, and Nezumi wasn’t sure he would be able to deal with it without Shion besides him.

_I could visit Inukashi,_ Nezumi suggested to himself, but then he remembered that Safu said she had a series of tests that day, which also meant that Safu too was off the table. Nezumi strode into the next room and walked in circles until his eyes fell on a thing that hadn’t occupied his thoughts in a very, very long time—his bookshelf. For the first time in his life, Nezumi stood before his books and felt almost alien.

Of course he still read regularly, but it wasn’t the same. Nezumi used to read while eating breakfast and lunch and dinner. He used to read on the subway, on his breaks, before he went to sleep, when he was alone at home after a day of teaching at school, and when he wasn’t alone because one of the new teachers somehow managed to drag him somewhere. Nezumi used to read like he breathed; it wasn’t a hobby for him, it was a necessity. _When did it become like this?_ Nezumi tried to remember, _I’m pretty sure it was the same at least until Shion and I—Oh._

And just like that, the illusion was shattered and Nezumi was no longer blinded by his own happiness. Nezumi had suddenly realized that Shion changed him. A lot. Not reading as frequently was just a start. Nezumi never made friends other than Inukashi, and they almost never met outside of school, but here he was with Shion, and occasionally with Safu, or Karan. He had spent almost every night of the month before Shion left to the United States sharing a bed with him. He wasn’t alone anymore.

Because of Shion he couldn’t work; he became too attached, and he couldn’t function properly without him around. He stayed in Japan. He drove to a bar in the middle of the night to pick Shion up. He was worried about him when he panicked about his hair. He tutored him. He had done so many things he wouldn’t have even thought about before he met Shion. Normally, a person would be glad to think about how he changed for the better, but Nezumi felt nothing of the sort; his mind was infested with one emotion only.

Shion had changed him. Shion had changed him so much, and he never noticed. He was blind and he was foolish, and he fell right into Shion’s trap. This was not supposed to happen, not to Nezumi. Nezumi and Inukashi were once the same: survivors. They trusted nobody and advanced only on their own. When they reunited after all of these years, Inukashi was already deep inside of Safu’s trap, and she was well aware of that. He promised himself he won’t fall, because that’s what survivors do, they keep going even if it means leaving other survivors behind.

Nezumi avoided countless of traps before, but not Shion’s. Just like Inukashi with Safu, Nezumi didn’t notice until it was too late. Yes, it was scary to know that Safu possessed the skills to trick Inukashi, but it terrified him to know that Shion possessed the skills to trick _him_.

It was simple and swift; Shion ambushed him patiently and attacked so fast Nezumi couldn’t even tell he had been hit. It was cruel, heartless even; it was inhumanly accurate and impossibly effective. Shion held him captive now and he could kill him if he wanted to. He could torture him if he wanted to. But he didn’t, he kept him trapped but alive, and Nezumi could do nothing about it.

All of a sudden Nezumi couldn’t feel happy anymore. Not with Shion. He realized that Shion was scary; he was terrifying; he was every single one of Nezumi’s nightmares; he was his downfall; he was his end.

_Escape,_ Nezumi thought in panic, _I must escape. Right now._

But he couldn’t do that. All he could do was sit on the floor before his bookshelf and silently cry out for his limbs to move so he could run as far as possible from Japan, from Shion. He yelled and shouted, yet none of his cries could escape his lips.

He didn’t know how much time passed, but eventually he heard a knock on his door. He walked back into the bedroom and from there to the door, exhausted, scared, and empty. He didn’t think about anything, he couldn’t. He just opened the door where Safu stood, looking at her feet, crying.

“It’s time to fulfil your promise,” she said.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter set a new time record for this fic. As much as I'd love to say I'll try to break this record or at least get close to it, I don't see that happening. I'm super excited about the next chapter, so I already outlined it, and it was so long that I had to cut it 3/4 through, and it's still super long. My point is, yes it might take me a while, but it'll be worth it. Hopefully.


	5. Anne of Green Gables

Act V: Anne of Green Gables

Inukashi always wondered why a woman like her mother married her dad. It wasn’t for the money, Inukashi was sure, and it wasn’t an arranged marriage either. Inukashi’s mother chose to marry her father, which always seemed peculiar to Inukashi. Her mother was kind, sweet, and loving, which made her the worst possible match to her cold, selfish father.

Inukashi’s father was always sick and always working, an awful combination that only made his health worse. One time, Inukashi told her mom that she hoped he would just die, but her mom said nothing; she only gave Inukashi a sad look. The idea crossed Inukashi’s mind countless of times after that, but she never said it aloud again.

Inukashi’s mom was her angel; she was the person Inukashi looked up to the most. Even when her father yelled at both of them because he was frustrated with his work, even when he came back home once a week and only for a few hours, Inukashi’s mother never seemed upset or hateful, only worried. To Inukashi, she seemed like a saint.

They were both taken to the hospital as soon as the kidnappers were captured; Inukashi didn’t remember most of it, but she knew that much. She felt better almost immediately, but the doctors were still worried and wanted her to stay in bed for awhile. Inukashi argued; she told them she was feeling fine and insisted to see her mother, but the doctors just shook their heads and asked her to stay put for the next few days.

A few times, Nezumi came to visit her. On his first visit, he just sat in a small chair by her bed and slid a small, blue notebook with notes about everything she missed in school. He didn’t seem bothered by the bandages that covered her from head to toe, which brought her so many pitying looks from her doctors. He just sat there and looked through the window of her room.

On his second visit, Nezumi brought a book with him. He came when visiting hours began and left when they were over. The only time they exchanged words was when Inukashi asked him what book he was reading, and he answered _Hamlet._

From his third visit onwards, Nezumi still brought books, but now he read them aloud so he could share them with her. Sometimes they just talked; Inukashi complained about how the doctors refused to let her see her mother, and Nezumi made fun of the luxurious hospital and the royal treatment Inukashi was receiving.

Before Nezumi’s fifth visit, Inukashi finally got the permission to see her mother. Her room wasn’t far, and she had to use every bit of willpower she had to keep herself from running all the way over there. When she arrived, the doctors informed her grimly that her mother had no more than a few days to live.

At first, she swore. She cursed her fate, every god she could think of, and her father, who had let the police take their time looking for Inukashi and her mom instead of simply paying the perpetrators. She knew her father couldn’t care less about her well-being, but her mother was different: the jewel in his crown and a symbol of prosperity and wealth. Losing her would mean losing the only thing that made him look human. He’d had a hard time maintaining that image, and Inukashi’s father cared about his image more than anything.

Inukashi’s father could certainly pay. In fact, he could pay their ransom ten times and the difference in his bank account would still be almost unnoticeable. _But no,_ Inukashi thought, _what would the investors think? What would the media think?_

Eventually, Inukashi had no energy left to hate her father. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do other than listen to her mother’s dying breaths. So she did. Inukashi just drowned in her grief, too tired to even think about a way to recover and live her life without her mother.

Inukashi sat in the corner of the room. The walls were painted in a warm shade of gold and the floor was hidden under a light-gray carpet. After seeing her mother’s tormented expression, Inukashi couldn’t bear looking at her again. Occasionally, her mother would moan softly. It was painful to hear, and Inukaski wished the moans would stop. She wanted her mother to find peace.

Nezumi softly opened the door to Inukashi’s mom’s room and sat by Inukashi’s side. She hugged her knees and did nothing to acknowledge his presence, but she knew who it was without even looking. She recognized his scent.

Inukashi said nothing for a while, and Nezumi didn’t pressure her to speak. The only sound in the room was the sound of the heartbeat monitor that was attached to Inukashi’s mom and the footsteps of the nurses and doctors who walked in the hallway outside. Nezumi wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes, as if having a hard time adjusting to the hospital’s smell. He spent a lot of time in hospitals when he was about twelve, when his grandma died. This scent didn’t bring up any pleasant memories.

“The doctors say she’s fatally wounded,” Inukashi said at last.

“I’m sorry.” Nezumi tried to offer his honest condolences, although he knew it meant nothing. He knew that Inukashi's mother was the only person in Inukashi’s life whom she truly loved. His pity could ease nothing. Inukashi went mute again, and Nezumi could feel her shaking slightly as she tried to hold back her tears.

Inukashi’s mother moaned again and Inukashi shrank. Nezumi put his hand on her shoulder. “Maybe you should rest a little more.”

“And leave her alone? No way,” Inukashi bared her teeth. “I’m staying.”

“I know it’s hard to admit,” whispered Nezumi, “but there’s nothing you can do for her now.”

“I can stay,” she insisted. “That’s the least I can do.”

“You’re only hurting yourself by staying here,” Nezumi argued.

Inukashi looked at her mother’s bed pensively. “My pain is nothing compared to hers. What would you do if you were me?”

Nezumi didn’t answer. His grandma too died a slow, painful death, and while his grandma served more as a teacher than a parent figure, he knew how hard it was to watch. Nezumi’s grandma was strict and cold; Nezumi saw her scare almost everyone they met as they traveled—from fellow researchers to people who were unlucky enough to sit beside them on a bus. But Nezumi never feared her; he respected her, listened to her, and never dared to question her. He didn’t love her, either; or at least he didn’t think he loved her, because he wasn’t sure how exactly loving a person feels like.

Nezumi could easily slip back to these countless times when he sat beside her bed and heard her muffled, ceaseless groans of pain, which sometimes still haunted him at night. He remembered that old, crumbling hospital where he lost the only person he truly knew. It wasn’t elegant like the hospital where Inukashi and her mom were treated; the beds were stone-hard and the food was more liquid than the water, which Nezumi thought was a little too brown.

Occasionally, his grandmother would gather enough strength to speak to him, to teach him as much of her ways as possible, just before the end. She would open her mouth and mumble frantically, sometimes spitting blood as she spoke. And in the middle of it all, there was only one thing that relieved her.

_Sing for me, Nezumi._

Nezumi stood up, and Inukashi’s gaze followed him as he walked to her mother’s side. Nezumi paused for a few minutes as he looked at Inukashi’s mother wounded body. “If you could make her pain stop forever,” he said, “would you do it?”

Inukashi considered his question for a little while before asking, “Can you make it stop?” Nezumi nodded. “Do it,” Inukashi pleaded brokenly.

Nezumi took a deep breath. Then, he sang. Inukashi had never heard Nezumi sing before and was almost startled by the sudden move. Nezumi was the last person in the world she expect to be a singer, and such a breathtaking singer at that. His voice was beautiful, but in a frightful way. For a split second, Inukashi almost jumped on her feet and attacked him. But almost instantly Inukashi felt it: a calm, smooth wave going through her like the wind, taking her pain and suffering. From that day onward, Nezumi’s singing voice would always be the thing she loved and feared the most.

Inukashi didn’t remember how long he sang, but she remembered the beeping of the heart monitor gradually slowing until it ceased, leaving Nezumi’s song the only sound echoing between the walls of the hospital room. After Nezumi finished singing, he stood aside so that Inukashi could look at her mother one last time. Fearing the wounded expression her mother bore while fighting her pain, Inukashi walked slowly to Nezumi’s side, only to see her mom smiling peacefully.

Inukashi sobbed; then people started pouring into the room. Holding her hands to hide her face, Inukashi broke through the throng and into the hallway. Nezumi ran after her, following her to the hospital’s roof, where she finally allowed herself to cry.

They sat together for hours; Inukashi crying into Nezumi’s shoulder, and Nezumi watching the sun as it went down, giving Inukashi all of the support she needed simply by sitting there. Sometimes she mumbled something intangible, and Nezumi hummed in reassurance.

“Thank you,” she finally said. “Thank you so much.”

Nezumi shrugged. Inukashi kept crying for a little while longer, and by the time the sun disappeared completely they both just sat there, quiet.

“Nezumi,” she said.

“What?” Nezumi asked.

“If I,” she started, trying as hard as she could to keep her voice calm, “if I ever find myself in a situation, a painful situation, where I can’t… I can’t just die quickly, would you sing for me as well?”

Nezumi looked at her and said, “Sure.”

“Do you promise?” Inukashi asked hurriedly.

“I promise,” he answered. “If you ever face some sort of unbearable suffering, I swear I’ll come to you. No matter where you are, no matter where I am, I promise I’ll give you a song.”

• • • • • •

Nezumi never claimed to know much about cancer. He knew only what any average person knew about it. He knew it could take a very long time to kill a person; he knew that was the reason his grandma died; and the most recent piece of information he added to that list—he knew Inukashi had it.

When it became obvious that Inukashi was going to die in the next few days, the first thing Safu did was to call Shion in tears while furiously searching for a last minute flight back to Japan for him. He returned in less than a day, but he and Nezumi couldn’t bring themselves to be happy about it. Shion was too busy grieving for Inukashi, and Nezumi was still terrified by his latest discoveries about Shion’s and his relationship.

Safu only told Nezumi about Inukashi’s fatal condition when Shion was already back in Japan. Nezumi drove Safu to the hospital, where he saw Shion for the first time in weeks, along with Karan who was also there to visit Inukashi. Nezumi held Shion close and said nothing, patting his back soothingly and forgetting how terrifying the kid in his arms looked only a few moments ago. Shion and Safu led Nezumi to Inukashi’s room before Nezumi could tell them he planned to go back to the hotel until Inukashi was ready, but after reuniting with Shion, he was surprised to discover he didn’t mind staying.

They sat outside of Inukashi’s room. Shion cried into Nezumi’s shoulder and Karan stood behind them patting his back. They took turns saying their farewells; Shion’s came after his mother’s; Nezumi chose to skip his turn, and Safu, the last of them, had been alone with Inukashi in her room for the last hour. When she opened the door and asked all of them to come in, her eyes and nose were red and she was still crying.

It was a private hospital, one of the many things Inukashi could easily afford. Her room was warmly decorated, although in their grief, none of them could appreciate it. Nezumi sadly recognized that the room was very similar to the rooms where Inukashi and her mother were treated many years ago.

They stood around Inukashi’s bed; Safu walked to the far side of the bed and held Inukashi’s hand firmly. Karan stood next to her, hugging her in a pitiful attempt to comfort her, Shion and Nezumi stood on the other side of the bed with their hands held tightly together. Nezumi gazed at the crying people around him and then down to the bed.

Nezumi looked at the one person in the entire world whom he was willing to admit that he truly knew. He felt a sudden wave of melancholy. Again, he was losing the only person that understood him. He looked at Inukashi’s weak body, and she opened her eyes to look at him one last time. He held her hand and said, “It’s okay, Inukashi. I’m here.”

Nezumi took a deep breath and closed his eyes before he began to sing. Gradually, he heard the sobs calm down. He felt Shion’s weight resting on his shoulder and felt Inukashi’s grip loosening slowly. He heard footsteps in the hallway stop when they neared the room. He swore he could hear Inukashi mumble something that resembled _thank you_.

Nezumi sang some parts twice and others even three times. He knew Inukashi was no longer listening after he finished half of the original song, but he kept singing. Inukashi was dead, but as long as he kept singing, he could keep his eyes shut and pretend he was holding the hand of a mutt who was very much alive.

When the song was over, Nezumi opened his eyes, and for a brief moment, time froze. Inukashi was smiling peacefully; Shion, Safu and Karan stood with their eyes still closed, but they were no longer crying. They too seemed as peaceful as Inukashi.

Nezumi covered his face with the hand he used to hold Inukashi. Nezumi’s voice saved his grandmother. Nezumi’s voice saved Inukashi’s mom. Nezumi’s voice saved Inukashi herself. Nezumi’s voice saved Inukashi’s friends who couldn’t bear losing her. When the song was over, Nezumi was the only person crying in the room.

• • • • • •

It only took a few weeks before they read Inukashi’s will, mostly because many people wanted to know who would inherit the company. For those who knew Inukashi, the answer was obvious, but the future CEO was too busy grieving to be thankful for that decision.

Apparently, the only people Inukashi mentioned in her will were Shion, Nezumi, and Safu, so they were supposed to meet with her lawyer privately. Unfortunately, every journalist in the country decided that the future of Inukashi’s company was more important than respecting her closest friends who were still grieving, and the street was flooded with people who tried to shove their recorders into Nezumi’s and Shion’s faces when they arrived.

“I’m going to find Safu.” Shion rested his hand on Nezumi’s shoulder as they reached the lawyer’s office. “It must be hard for her, especially with all of these journalists around. Seriously, some people have no respect.”

Nezumi nodded, and Shion went on his search. Nezumi just stayed in place and watched Shion go. Ever since Inukashi died, Shion supported Safu, and Safu supported Shion back. Nezumi supported Shion as well, and it made him wonder what Shion would do after he returned to London. Throughout these weeks, Nezumi never found a good time to tell Shion that he was leaving. He feared that the news would be that last straw that would break him completely. But Shion was strong, Nezumi knew, and he had Safu. Shion would get over his leaving eventually. So far, Nezumi had avoided thinking about whether he even wanted Shion to get over him or not.

Finally, Shion returned with Safu. He hugged her shoulders as if to support her, but Nezumi knew Shion was using Safu for support as much as he was supporting her. Too many times in these few weeks, Nezumi had seen the same faded smile that Shion wore when he talked to her. Inukashi’s lawyer appeared immediately after them, asking the group to accompany him to his office.

It was luxurious and expensive-looking office, colored with dark shades of red, which made Nezumi incredibly uncomfortable. The lawyer, an old, wrinkled man, sat behind a preposterously wide desk, gesturing to the rest of them to sit in the large chairs in front of it.

He discussed all sorts of legal issues, or so it seemed to Nezumi because he hadn’t been paying much attention to the lawyer’s droning. Finally, he said, “Inukashi left a personal letter to each of you, along with other things.”

“For Safu,” the lawyer read, “I leave my company. I know that this is more of a job than a gift, but I’m afraid I have nothing that I consider worthy to be a goodbye gift for you. I’m sorry.”

Safu stiffened; it was exactly what she expected to hear. The lawyer then handed her a thick envelope signed _to Safu_ with Inukashi’s handwriting. Safu took it with shaking hands and tried to hold back her sobs. _For her,_ Nezumi knew, _this letter is the best goodbye gift in the world._

“To Shion,” the lawyer said, “I give my dog. I know you will take good care of him.”

Shion’s hands flew to his mouth to hide his surprised gasp, and he closed his eyes to prevent himself from crying. Nezumi always knew Inukashi loved dogs, but her father never allowed her to get one. When Nezumi arrived Tokyo, he wasn’t surprised to discover that Inukashi had a dog now and that she was spending most of her time with it. Giving Shion that dog was equivalent of giving Shion part of Inukashi herself; it was much more than Shion had expected to receive.

The lawyer handed Shion a thinner letter, which was signed _to Shion_. When Shion uncovered his mouth to receive the letter, his other hand traveled to Nezumi’s and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. For a second, a tiny voice in Nezumi’s head told him that this might be the last time he would hold Shion’s hand and that Shion didn’t even know it. He decided to ignore that voice and instead forced himself to concentrate only on the lawyer. 

“To Nezumi,” the lawyer began again, “I leave some money for the trouble, as well as this package.”

He gave Nezumi a small package wrapped in brown paper, and two letters. One was signed _to Nezumi_ , and the other appeared to contain a check. Nezumi looked emptily at the lawyer, who expected another emotional reaction. When he realized Nezumi would provide him with no such thing, the lawyer turned to end the meeting.

• • • • • •

Shion and Safu both wanted to read their letters privately, so they decided to go their separate ways. Because Nezumi had driven Shion to the lawyer’s office, he also drove him back home. Shion was too quiet during their ride, and Nezumi’s mind raced trying to think about something, _anything,_ that he could say to make Shion feel better.

Nezumi returned to the hotel room alone and exhausted. He collapsed on his bed. It was over. He had fulfilled his promise. Inukashi was dead and there was nothing keeping him in Japan; he could return to his gray and peaceful life in England. He would get his job back and live quietly, as he had lived for so long before this entire thing blew in like a storm and ruined his routine. 

Eventually, Nezumi got up and decided to see what Inukashi left for him. The first thing he opened was the letter with the check. Upon seeing the amount of money Inukashi considered as ‘just something for the trouble’, he almost choked; it was almost as if she was trying to piss him off.

Nezumi sighed. He looked at the package in his lap and reached to open it with shaky hands. Inside the paper cover, Nezumi found a blue notebook. He opened it, only to discover his own handwriting. It was the notebook Nezumi had given Inukashi when her mother died. Under it, Nezumi found a similar notebook. The only difference between the two notebooks was that the other one was empty except for the first page, which said “Notes for Life” in Inukashi’s handwriting.

He closed the notebook and put it on his bed. Next, he looked at the letter Inukashi left for him for a few minutes before opening it. 

_Hey idiot,_

_Let’s be real, you’re not going to get a long emotional letter. I guess there are a few things I want to tell you, though._

_Thank you for coming all the way back to Japan to fulfill your promise. You know… you know how much it means to me. And I know that it was probably really hard for you to stay here, at least at first. So thank you for doing this._

_The second thing is this: don’t go back to London._

_I know you Nezumi, and I’ve been watching you and studying your behavior during your stay. It’s very likely that I noticed how much you care for Shion and how much he had changed you long before you did. I’ve never seen you this happy and I know that the moment you realize how happy you can be, you’ll get scared and run away._

_Being happy isn’t a scary thing, Nezumi, but letting someone other than yourself inside is. For you, it’s already too late. You’ve already let Shion inside. You can try to run away and close yourself up as fast as you can, but it letting someone inside goes both ways, and it’s scary for both of you. Don’t give Shion a reason to be afraid of ever opening up again. Don’t hurt him. I know you don’t want to._

_Who am I kidding? Both of us know that writing emotional speeches isn’t my thing and listening to them isn’t yours. I can go on like this all day long; you won’t listen to me anyway. I wish I could just tell you, ‘don’t leave Shion’ and expect that you’ll act like a reasonable person for once and just do it. But I can’t and you’re probably going to leave, so I’ll just get the best out of this._

_When you’re back in London, all miserable and pathetic, could you do me a favor and remember I said ‘I told you so’?_

_P.S._

_Knowing you’re a cowardly piece of shit who will only tell Shion you’re about to leave the day of his flight back, I told Shion you’re leaving in his letter._

Nezumi barely had time to realize what Inukashi had done before he heard knocks and Shion’s crying voice asking him to open the door. Nezumi rushed to answer the call, facing Shion, who seemed about as broken as he sounded.

“Inukashi… Inukashi’s letter,” he tried to say, but Nezumi only sighed and saved him the trouble.

“It’s true.”

“Huh?”                

“I’m going back to London,” he confirmed.

“Why?” Shion asked.

“Because I don’t belong here,” Nezumi answered.

“Yes, you do,” Shion yelled. “What makes you think that you don’t belong here?” Then Shion went quiet and his face changed as if a sudden realization hit him. “Are you leaving because of me?”

“What? No! Of course not,” exclaimed Nezumi. “I—I’m just… I’m not like you. I know you didn’t have the brightest childhood, but at least you had your mother, and Safu. I’m not trying to make a competition out of how horrible our childhoods were but,” he stumbled, “what I’m trying to say is, that you know what love feels like. I don’t. We’re simply not built from the same materials. We have completely different natures.”

Shion’s expression sank. “So it _is_ because of me.”

“No,” Nezumi rested his hands on Shion’s shoulders, “it’s because of me. Please, just, don’t blame yourself, okay?”

“In that case,” suggested Shion, “let me come with you to London.”

“You can’t,” Nezumi replied, almost too quickly. “Your place is here. This is where your mother is, where Safu is, where your job is. Your life is here, and mine is back in London.”

Shion leaned his head against Nezumi’s chest, and Nezumi hugged him tightly. “There’s nothing I can say or do that will change your mind, is there?”

“No,” Nezumi admitted.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me too long, as always. I have no excuses and have absolutely no idea when the next chapter will be done probably in a pretty long time. But hey, at least there's only one more chapter before you get rid of me and my irregular updates ;) Thanks again to color2413 who proof-read :D


	6. Journey to the West

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it a plane? Is it a bird? No! It's the last chapter of this blasted fic!

Act VI: Journey to the West

Nezumi packed most of his belongings the day before his flight, leaving his room dishearteningly empty. Other than two cramped suitcases, a toothbrush, and a few shirts, nothing remained in the room. Nezumi planned to sleep until the late hours of the morning, then throw anything that wasn’t packed yet into one of his suitcases, and finally arrive at the airport a few hours before the flight to London departed on the same day’s afternoon. Unfortunately for Nezumi, he awoke at 7AM, feeling too restless to sleep, ruining that plan completely.

By 7:30, he realized there was no way could fall asleep again, so he jumped out of bed, only to realize that he had absolutely nothing to do other than to stand in the middle of his room and stare blankly at the walls. Realizing this, he restarted his attempts to fall back to sleep, which were just as unsuccessful as the earlier ones. At around 8, Nezumi finally abandoned the idea of resting and decided to struggle with his new problem: finding something to do until Shion came to drive him to the airport at 10.

He spent the next hour and a half losing himself in his thoughts, only to return to reality every few minutes. A half-hour before Shion was supposed to arrive, Nezumi began to pack his remaining things as slowly as possible. Normally, it would take him only five minutes or so, meaning packing couldn’t occupy him for nearly enough time before Shion came over, so Nezumi tried his best to spend as much time as possible packing. It still took him no more than eleven minutes.

Finally, the bell rang, and Nezumi ran to open the door, never imagining that it could be someone other than Shion.

“Safu?” Nezumi exclaimed, obviously confused.

“Hey, I’m here with Shion.” She pointed at Shion who stood behind her and waved almost shyly.  “Thought I should probably say goodbye before you leave.”

“Well,” Nezumi began, forming a sentence. He hasn’t seen Safu since they had all met for the reading of Inukashi’s will; Safu has been too busy managing the company in the chaos of Inukashi’s death and her own grieving, and Nezumi was too busy worrying about his own problems to think about Safu.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be quick,” she said, and before Nezumi could explain that “quick” wasn’t his intention, he felt a sharp pain between his legs that paralyzed him completely, leaving him nauseated and curled on the floor trying to understand what just happened. _Safu had kneed me_ , Nezumi barely realized through his fogged thoughts.

“Nezumi!” Shion called, and Safu walked away, mumbling “ _I told you I’d do it”_ under her breath.

By the time Nezumi could open his eyes again, Shion was already sitting by his side, looking over him with a worried expression. “Are you alright?”

Nezumi tried to tell him it was fine, that he should get away from him already, but the only thing that left his mouth was a pained groan.

Shion turned his gaze to the direction in which Safu went a few moments ago. “I wonder what came over her?” he mused. Then he looked at Nezumi again. “I’m so sorry; I really don’t know why she did that.”

After some more groaning and more of Shion’s apologies in Safu’s name, Nezumi managed to get up on his unsteady feet and stand without Shion’s support. Shion still looked concerned, but Nezumi didn’t have the energy to try to calm him down. If anything, seeing how precious Shion thought he was made him want to run to the airport immediately and jump on the first plane he could get on, no matter where it was going.

But sadly, he couldn’t do that, so instead he shook Shion’s lingering hands off him and went to grab his suitcases. After fighting with Shion over whether he should rest some more and whether he needed help carrying his luggage out, the two finally left the room that had served as Nezumi’s home for the past few months. Nezumi tried not to think about it too much; a home was just a house after all. Besides, his real home was in London. Then his thoughts wandered in a different direction; Nezumi noticed himself thinking about how well Shion was handling his leaving. He cursed, mentally scolding himself and saying that “Shion” wasn’t a better thought than that entire “home” subject, but it was too late. Nezumi didn’t have long to think about possible reasons for Shion’s acting so naturally because Nezumi realized how wrong he was by the time they reached Shion’s car.

“My mom made you something.” Shion smiled a clearly fake smile after the two sat inside the car and with shaking hands, handed Nezumi a paper bag.

“Thanks,” replied Nezumi, and looked outside the window, trying to ignore that incredibly deep and tormented breath Shion took before eventually starting up the car.

The ride was unnaturally quiet. No matter how hard he tried to stare at the road rather than Shion, Nezumi noticed that Shion was feeing nervous. It started with Shion’s taking a few wrong turns and driving right past a bunch of stop signs, luckily without any incidents. When they became stuck in traffic, Shion played with the AC for a long minute, before deciding to just turn it off. When he almost drove into a one-way street from the wrong direction, Nezumi almost yelled at him to calm the fuck down before he got both of them killed. The worst part was that Shion didn’t even seem to notice any of his mistakes. He just kept driving without making so much as a sound.

Eventually, they made it to the airport, alive and in one piece. Shion successfully parked the car without driving over or into anything, and even opened the door on his side without leaving a mark on the car parked beside them. This time, Shion managed to reach the trunk before Nezumi did, so Nezumi could do nothing to stop him from grabbing his carry-on and carrying it to the main building. As Nezumi checked in his luggage, they stood together and then walked together to security, where Nezumi sent his hand in Shion’s direction, asking for his bag. Shion didn’t flinch.

“Shion,” Nezumi called out, thinking that Shion was in the same trance he was in when they drove over to the airport. But Shion was fully aware; his gaze pierced Nezumi.

“Why do you have to go?” he demanded.

Nezumi sighed. “We already talked about that, Shion. No point going over it again.”

“But there is!” Shion yelled.

“No, there isn’t,” argued Nezumi. “Now give me my bag.”

“I don’t understand,” Shion insisted, “why can’t you just stay? What is stopping you?”

“I’m a grown man, and if I want to live in London, I can live in London,” Nezumi almost shouted.

“That’s not a reason.”

“You’re being a kid!”

“And you’re really never going to come back?” asked Shion. “Can’t you just come visit every once in a while?”

“I’m getting really sick of the conversation,” Nezumi growled and snatched the bag violently from Shion’s hands, which followed for a moment, but released the bag half way. Nezumi turned around to leave but stopped and looked back, pressing his lips against Shion’s for just a moment. He wasn’t quite sure why he did that or why Shion accepted the kiss so willingly, but he decided that it hardly mattered. As this was the last time Nezumi was to see Shion, there was no point in worrying about these details when they would become so irrelevant in just a moment. “Goodbye,” he whispered, and then turned away from Shion for the last time in his life.

• • • • • •

The cold woke Nezumi up. This had happened to him far too often ever since he returned to London. He blamed the weather, even though he knew perfectly well that the real reason was the lack of another person’s warmth in their shared bed. Sometimes when he woke up and his thoughts were still hazy with dreams, he would conclude that Shion had already left for work and wondered why Shion’s alarm clock didn’t awaken him. Once he realized his mistake, he would sink into disappointment and self-criticism and try to fall asleep again, which never actually worked.

However, today was one of the days when Nezumi woke up completely aware of where he was; and where Shion was. He couldn’t decide which was less appealing, waking up and knowing immediately that Shion wasn’t there, or fumbling in bed looking for him. He decided that it was pointless to think about it. Just dealing with both of them was hard enough; he didn’t need to choose which one was worse. 

Eventually, Nezumi got out of bed, ignoring the fact that there was nothing for him to do even if he was up. _First, breakfast,_ he thought. He wasn’t hungry at all, but it wasn’t like there was anything else for him to do other than eat. As he walked across his room, kicking away and stepping on dirty clothes that pilled on the floor, Nezumi didn’t bother to change out of his pajamas. His entire apartment was too dark for, well, whatever hour it was. Again, Nezumi chose to blame the different weather rather than his being too lazy to turn on any of the lights.

The kitchen was in even worse condition than the bedroom. There were wrappers, some still containing food, on the floor and table. The sink was so full of dirty dishes that Nezumi had to start piling them on the counter beside it. Given the kitchen’s current state, Nezumi had to spend more than ten minutes looking for a clean bowl, settling instead on a small pot; then he spent the same amount of time looking for a cereal box that still contained something edible. Finally, he opened the fridge, staring distractedly at its shelves until he remembered that he had run out of milk about three days ago but had never gotten around to buying more.

How long did it take his life to regress to this state? _Not long enough,_ Nezumi thought bitterly. If he had to guess, he would say it had been a few months. Nezumi ate his breakfast in the living room, sitting on the couch in front of the TV, watching nothing in particular. Sadly, eating breakfast, even in his zombie-like state, took only about twenty minutes, all too soon leaving him searching for something new to do.

He ran a list of potential activities through his head. First was looking for a job. Nezumi had quit his job as a teacher when he moved back to Tokyo, and because the money Inukashi gave him was more than enough to live on decently for the time being, he hadn’t bothered to look for a new job. He found himself missing his old job—not because he liked it; he honestly hated it—but because at least it killed some time. Then again, looking for a new job should be quite a time-consuming task, yet Nezumi couldn’t bring himself to even think about doing anything, let alone something as troublesome as _work._

With job hunting out of the question, Nezumi was left with very few options. He supposed he could clean up the kitchen, seeing that the pot he used to serve himself breakfast was the last clean dish in the house. Another option was to go outside and finally buy some milk and maybe some instant ramen or something else that required very little cooking. He shot down both options because getting dressed seemed like a hassle, and his kitchen was in such a mess that just thinking about _the idea_ of picking up where to start cleaning made Nezumi’s head ache.

Nezumi finally decided just to maintain his normal daily routine: sitting on the couch and watching TV. By itself, that wasn’t very taxing, but Nezumi never really did like watching TV, and he had become incredibly jaded because he had done hardly anything except watch TV ever since his return to London. He lay down but rose again quickly after feeling something jab his side. It was a book he had left there, maybe the night before, or the one before that. Many of his books were scattered around the living room because Nezumi sometimes became bored with TV and just picked a random book from somewhere to scan through.

That particular habit wasn’t new to Nezumi. He did it all the time before he and Shion started living together. It was impossible for him to do it in Shion’s apartment, and as their relationship progressed, in his own apartment, too. Shion wasn’t a clean-freak, that was certain, but when it came to his books, he could give Nezumi a long, detailed lecture every time he so much as put a book on the wrong shelf, or on the right shelf but in the wrong place. And placing the books in piles on the floor was unthinkable.

Nezumi chuckled. _Shion would probably go crazy just by looking at my apartment right now,_ he thought, but then froze, realizing he was thinking about Shion: the one forbidden topic. _Shion is a person of the past,_ Nezumi told himself. Without a second thought, he jumped off the couch and into the bedroom, changed his clothes and left his apartment. He was determined to go to the nearest bookstore, then buy milk, and finally return home without a trace of Shion in his mind.

The weather outside was even gloomier than the inside of Nezumi’s apartment. It was dark; it was cold; the ground was wet, and the cars made disgusting sounds as they passed by. Nezumi tried to escape at least the latter by walking into a nearby park and making his way directly through the park to the bookstore. It was a decision he soon regretted. The park was swarming with stupid squirrels that, in Nezumi’s opinion, were too happy-looking, which only made Nezumi feel even worse. That, along with an occasional couple or group of teenagers walking past him, made Nezumi hurry along to find some sort of refuge.

That refuge appeared sooner than expected, in the form of a small coffee shop Nezumi deemed to be an acceptable stop. That was Nezumi’s second mistake. The shop’s misleading dark windows made it appear less crowded than it really was, and Nezumi found himself waiting for his coffee surrounded by other people’s chatter. It was too long before his coffee arrived, and his server was in such a hurry that she almost spilled it all over him.

Nezumi sighed. He didn’t have anything in particular against clumsy people, at least not more than he had against people in general. But for some reason, he found this server’s clumsiness especially upsetting. She wasn’t even the cute kind of clumsy, which Nezumi would never have believed that he would come to appreciate. Shion used to drop things randomly all the time. At first, it really didn’t mean anything to Nezumi, but eventually he noticed these semi-horrified expressions Shion used to wear when upon realizing that whatever he was holding was going to fall. This definitely had its charm when Nezumi commented about it sharply, as did Shion’s flushed face, which never seemed to return to its original color until he had finished cleaning up whatever mess he had made.

Once again, Nezumi found himself thinking about Shion, but this time it didn’t piss him off nearly as much. The truth was that Shion infiltrated Nezumi’s mind more than once a day and he often lost the will to fight it by the third or fourth time. By then, he didn’t even have the energy to be surprised that he was already giving up, although it was only the second time he thought of Shion that day. He could only banish the thought by telling himself that _Shion is a person of the past,_ pay for his unfinished drink, and leave the coffee shop.

Nezumi continued his journey to the bookstore, still using the path through the park. That part of his trip wasn’t quieter than the first one; again he was constantly bothered by happy people and squirrels that ran around the park. He hadn’t been walking for long before a small boy, chasing a squirrel, collided with him. The child fell on the ground, surprised by the sudden hit that wasn’t so sudden—but still inevitable—for Nezumi. The boy looked up with big, confused eyes, staring at the annoying object that ruined his chase. His mother came quickly after him and helped him to stand and clean himself up, before turning to Nezumi, “I’m so sorry. Dear, apologize to this young man.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the kid said hurriedly. Before continuing, Nezumi just forced a smile in response to show that no harm had been done.

Although Nezumi didn’t think of squirrels as charming creatures, that incident made him wonder why so many people adored them. Surely, he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t see their cuteness. Then again, he didn’t like most animals. Inukashi and Shion frequently bugged him about it. He remembered when Inukashi’s dog gave birth to a bunch of puppies. Shion had been so excited; he was practically jumping up and down, telling Nezumi just how great puppies were and how much he loved them. It didn’t take Inukashi a second to shoot Shion down and tell him that Nezumi was a heartless monster who didn’t like puppies. Shion, with his own special way of understanding Inukashi’s insults, decided that it was impossible to dislike puppies and that the best solution was to walk behind Nezumi for the rest of that day, shoving a puppy into his face every time he turned around, and yelling “Isn’t he cute?”

Dogs in particular were Nezumi’s least favorite animal, mostly because he thought their devotion was stupid. Thinking back, Shion shared numerous traits with these idiotic animals. He was annoyingly devoted, to the point where Nezumi could probably burn down his house and he would still follow him mindlessly. _But Shion wasn’t stupid,_ Nezumi thought, _he was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them._ There must be something, he realized, that made dogs so loyal. He couldn’t determine whether it was a blindness to certain traits of their owners, or dogs’ abilities to see something in their owners that others couldn’t.

Shion had some other dog-like characteristics. He was very energetic and would get depressed if Nezumi didn’t pay him enough attention or didn’t go out occasionally to do something with him. He would rub his head against Nezumi’s shoulder when he tried to work or would block his view with his body when he tried to read, all to get Nezumi’s attention. Normally Nezumi would consider this sort of juvenile behavior stupid and irritating, but somehow when Shion did it, Nezumi had to admit that it was cute on some level. _Really,_ he wondered, _how can that kid even call himself an adult?_

That was when Nezumi realized he had reached the edge of the park, having passed the bookstore about fifteen minutes ago. This discovery also made him realize that he was thinking about Shion again, when he wasn’t supposed to. _Shion is a person of the past,_ Nezumi told himself as he turned back into the park, _but… maybe dogs aren’t that bad._

Eventually, Nezumi did get to the bookstore. There was something nice about it; quiet, peaceful, and warm, which made him rather happy. Because of the dim light outside, the light inside the shop made him feel that he could finally see clearly. The weather was so uninviting that very few people visited the bookstore, so it was actually quieter than the street outside. Nezumi quickly let himself sink between the shelves, reading titles and names of authors, feeling at home for the first time since he left Tokyo.

Without his even realizing it, Nezumi’s legs carried him to the science fiction section. He walked around for a few moments, before his eyes fell on a familiar name: _Asimov._

Nezumi turned around suddenly. “Hey, Shi—” Nezumi could barely stop himself from completing the sentence. He quickly turned back, glaring at _Asimov_ ’s name angrily, as if it was his fault Safu and Shion talked about his work so much he now associated him with Shion.

That was just too much. Ever since coming back, Nezumi accidently acted like Shion was right there beside him on multiple occasions, but only when he was half-asleep. Now, he was fully awake, in a bookstore, the one place he always loved, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about Shion.

 _Shion… Isn’t really a person of the past, is he?_ he thought sadly. He decided to pick up the book and carried it to the counter, where he silently paid for it before leaving the store.

Nezumi bought milk in a nearby convenience store, then walked back to his apartment with his head hanging. It was almost evening by the time he arrived home, so he had no choice but to turn on the lights in order to see. He put the milk in the fridge and then flopped down onto the couch with his new book, scanning the words carefully with his eyes, yet comprehending none of them.

It took him a while to realize he had gone through half of the book, and when he did so, he couldn’t even remember what it was about. He closed the book and let it fall from his hand to the floor. Another day passed. Or was it just one day? Maybe it was two; maybe a whole week, even. It hardly mattered, in Nezumi’s opinion. After staring at the ceiling for a long while, Nezumi sat up straight and looked at the window, then, determining it was late enough for bed, walked to his bedroom.

He jumped into bed without changing his clothes, and he would’ve gone to sleep as he was if he hadn’t heard the sound of something falling from the bed and hitting the floor. Nezumi dragged himself across the bed so that his head was peeking out from the other side, and after spending time looking over clothes and books that covered almost every inch of the floor, he found the source of the noise: his phone. Although his phone was of very little use for him of anyway, Nezumi reached out to get it and turned around in his bed to lie on his back, staring at the familiar ceiling as if there was something in it that could make him happy.

Not knowing what to expect, Nezumi decided to check his phone. There weren’t any texts, which didn’t surprise him, but something else on the screen did catch his attention: the date. Nezumi thought that it has been at least four months since he left Tokyo, but because his sense of time had become completely unreliable long ago (or not so long ago), he was willing to accept any period of over a month or so. But nothing had prepared him to face the fact that it has been no more than two weeks: two miserable weeks that felt like forever.

Suffering for months was fine because that meant it wouldn’t be long before Nezumi would have to pick himself up and return to his original way of life. Nezumi assumed that he would run out of money in a week or so, which would mean that he would then have to work and pull himself together. But if it had been no more than two weeks, Inukashi’s money should keep him settled for quite a bit longer. Of course, he could just work anyway, but he couldn’t even describe how much the thought bothered him, so he preferred to avoid it for as long as possible.

 _When did it become like this?_ he asked himself. Nezumi never had a problem with his work before. He liked living alone, he loved reading more than anything else, and was sure that given the opportunity, he would be more than happy to nothing but that for a few weeks. _How was it different from before?_ No matter how much he hated it, he already knew the answer. It was Shion. All too easily, Nezumi had gotten so used to living with another person. He had gotten used to having someone to talk to, someone to remind him of small things like to going out to buy milk, someone who made him want to work so he won’t have to sit around and miss that person when he was gone, someone who cared about him.

Nezumi was more than slightly disgusted by how weak he had become. Leaving Shion had seemed like the simplest solution, but now Nezumi knew it was much harder than that. He didn’t like admitting how difficult it was, but he no longer had the power to deny the truth. Nezumi tightened his grip on his phone. _I could call him,_ the thought voiced itself, and Nezumi didn’t even try to fight it, to convince himself he didn’t wantto call Shion. A voice in the back of his head kept yelling, and Nezumi wondered whether it was his grandmother’s or his own, _You don’t need Shion! You don’t need anyone but yourself! This has nothing to do with him! It’s about you! Just forget about him already, he only makes you weak!_

But Nezumi couldn’t listen anymore. Maybe a week ago he would have, but after spending every bit of energy just trying to convince himself he didn’t miss Shion, the idea of calling him was so tempting that Nezumi didn’t even realize he was already doing it until he heard the ringing on the receiving side of his call. With that came a number of different problems Nezumi hadn’t considered a moment before: _What am I going to say? What if he doesn’t pick up? What about the time difference between Tokyo and London? Is Shion even awake at—_

“Nezumi?” Shion’s all too familiar voice answered, clearly surprised. He wasn’t sure where Shion was, but it was a very noisy place for sure, because Nezumi could hear the chatter from the other side of the phone.

“Um… hey,” Nezumi answered, unsure what to say.

“Is there anything wrong?” Shion asked, leaving Nezumi’s mind racing, looking for an answer that would justify the phone call.

“I just thought, that, um, maybe we could catch up, or something,” he eventually said, assuming that Shion probably wouldn’t mind that sort of thing even though it was quite uncharacteristic of him.

“Well, to be honest, I’m kind of busy right now,” Shion admitted, “but maybe another time?”

 _That’s fine_ , Nezumi thought, _I would just go to sleep and call him when I wake up. No harm done._ But Nezumi knew that it wasn’t that easy. Even if Shion said they could talk later, if he hung up now, Nezumi wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to call Shion again.

“No,” Nezumi said weakly.

“What?” Shion asked, confused.

“Please,” Nezumi pleaded, “please, just don’t hang up.”

“Are you alright?” Shion replied with obvious worry in his voice.

“No,” Nezumi answered. “The truth is,” he said before he could stop himself, “that I miss you. A lot. And I… I just wanted to hear your voice. So please, stay on the line.”

Shion didn’t answer, but the background noise told Nezumi that he didn’t hang up. If Nezumi wasn’t stressed out before, he surely was now. Shion’s voice was easy to interpret, but with silence as a response, Nezumi could do nothing other than run through every scenario he could think of that would explain why Shion wasn’t saying anything. _Does he hate me for leaving? Maybe he’s so touched he can’t speak? What if he’s just trying to think of a nice way to turn me down? What if he already moved on?_

The last one broke Nezumi’s patience, and he didn’t wait before bursting out, “Are you seeing anyone? I’m not saying that you should just take me back if you’re not, because I _did_ leave you and I can’t possibly blame you for hating me for it. So I can’t blame you for not waiting either—”

“Idiot,” Shion said softly, but even so, Nezumi could still clearly hear from his voice that he was crying. “Of course I didn’t wait for you!”

Nezumi’s heart sank. “I-I see,” he tried to remain composed, “well—”

“I’m lost,” Shion said, still crying.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Nezumi attempted to calm Shion down, but his voice only got louder and louder.

“I have no idea where I am,” he shouted, “I think I got off at the wrong station.”

It took Nezumi a moment to understand that when Shion said he was lost, he meant it literally. “Calm down and tell me where you are.”

“I just said I have no idea where I am; are you even listening?” The panic in Shion’s voice worsened, and Nezumi could think of nothing to say to help. “Where are you right now?”

“Me?” Nezumi asked, surprised. “My apartment.”

“Do you have a car?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“If I ask someone to take the phone for a moment and tell you where I am, could you come and pick me up?”

“Shion, I don’t think cars work that way,” Nezumi said, but Shion wasn’t listening.

“I already asked a few people, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying,” Shion continued, gradually calming down. “British accents are so hard to understand! Wait, I think I see a tube station.”

“Tube?” Nezumi asked, “Shion, are you in London?”

“Alright, I’m right next to Green Park station. Do you think you can—”

“Shion, are you in London?” Nezumi repeated, this time more demandingly.

Shion fell quiet. “M-Maybe,” he started, hesitantly, “maybe I should’ve opened with that.”

Nezumi never ran so fast to his car in his life. “You said you’re near Green Park, right?”

“What? Ah, yes,” Shion answered quickly.

“I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you,” said Shion.

Nezumi reluctantly hung up, but he didn’t need to wait for long before hearing Shion’s voice again, because he was near Green Park station soon after, quickly spotting Shion by his blondish-white hair. “Shion!” he yelled, and Shion turned to him, his face lighting up the moment their eyes met. Nezumi once again ran as fast as his legs could carry him, but this time, Shion was doing the same thing to meet him halfway.

They didn’t care that Shion’s luggage was just standing there a few feet behind them as they embraced, or that people stared at them as they kissed. These were minor details compared to the fact that they _were_ embracing, that they _were_ kissing, that their noses were suddenly filled with each other’s scent and that _wow_ , now they could finally remember what happiness felt like.

They didn’t break the kiss until they were close to asphyxiation, and even then they could do nothing but stick their foreheads together and laugh with relief for a little while. Nezumi, who was too happy to think, put his hands on Shion’s cheeks to keep him close, but almost recoiled with surprised when he noticed they were wet with tears.

“I-I thought,” Shion cried, “I thought I w-was never going t-to s-see you again. I couldn’t… I couldn’t just s-sit down a-and wait for y-you to c-come—”

“Shhh, it’s alright,” said Nezumi while wiping away Shion’s tears, “I’m here now.”

Shion nodded weakly. “P-Promise,” he barely breathed, “promise me you will never leave me again.”

Nezumi separated their foreheads and pulled back, scanning Shion’s face quickly but softly. With a gentle smile, he said, “I will never, ever leave you again.” Then, Nezumi leaned in again, planting a small kiss on Shion’s lips before he could even react. “It’s a vow.”

• • • • • •

On the floor, Nezumi drank his coffee while reading that book by Asimov he had bought a week earlier. He had thought back to that day many times since then, mostly about what he would have done if only he knew that while he was fighting Shion in his mind, Shion was traveling in his direction at 600 miles per hour. The thought made him happy for reasons he didn’t quite understand. The sound of Nezumi’s phone going off interrupted his peaceful reading, and he had to hurry and put his book and coffee down to reach it.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Why isn’t Shion picking up?” Safu’s demanding voice came from the other side, but Nezumi was hardly surprised.

“He’s asleep.”

“At this hour?” Safu questioned.

“It’s not that late,” argued Nezumi.

“I suppose,” Safu agreed reluctantly. “Also, he didn’t sleep very well in the past few weeks, so I can’t blame him. There are some people I can blame for that, though.”

Nezumi sighed, but said nothing. He didn’t expect Safu to let him live his actions down easily; in fact, he would be surprised if she ever stop mentioning it. Well, he could hardly fault her for doing that. He had hurt Shion a lot, and regardless of the fact that it was hardly Safu’s job to pull him back together when she herself was still mourning, just seeing him in that state must have been very hard on her. Nezumi knew it would’ve been hard on him if he had witnessed it.

“When are you two flying back to Tokyo?” asked Safu.

“Shion told you?” Nezumi sounded more surprised than he should’ve been, mostly because he was around Shion all the time ever since they reunited and he didn’t recall seeing Shion on the phone at all.

“Of course he did,” Safu said. “Tell him to call back as soon when he wakes up. Oh, and hurry back to Tokyo. His dog misses him.”

“Dog?”

“The one he got from Inukashi,” explained Safu. “He left it with me before flying to London. As much as I like that dog, his place is with Shion, not with me. And with you from now on, I guess, since you’re going to be living together. I hope you like dogs.”

“I do.”

“Good. How’re the preparations going?”

“Well, we already sold almost everything in my apartment,” Nezumi told her, “except my books, which should arrive at Tokyo in a few months. We sold the apartment itself yesterday, so there’s no need to delay our flight tomorrow.”

“Great,” said Safu. “That was quick.”

“And hard,” Nezumi admitted, “but we made it.”

“I know this goes without saying,” Safu continued, “but now that I’m the official owner of Inukashi’s company, I have quite a lot of influence and I’m not afraid to use it. I would keep practicing my English if I were you, because if you hurt Shion again, you won’t be able to stay in Japan.”

“Don’t worry,” Nezumi said, “that’s not going to happen.”

“Perfect. Goodbye, then.”

Nezumi didn’t have time to reply before Safu hung up. He sighed again, then put the phone back and returned to reading his book. It wasn’t much longer before a very tired-looking Shion walked into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and looking around the empty apartment lazily.

“Nezumi?” he finally said when he spotted him on the floor. Nezumi got up with a smile and kissed Shion’s head.

“Morning,” Nezumi greeted, “did I wake you up?”

“No,” Shion yawned, “I woke up alone in bed, so—” Shion immediately stopped talking when he realized what he was about to say.

“Come on,” Nezumi pulled his hand and led him back to the bedroom, ignoring what Shion almost suggested, “if you’re still tired you should sleep some more. I’ll join you.”

“Wh—that’s not what I meant!”

“Come on, come on, it’s still early!” Nezumi paid no heed to Shion’s protest.

“It’s ten o’clock!”

“That’s still early,” Nezumi claimed.

“It’s most certainly not!” Shion argued, but it was too late, because they were already in the bedroom, and before Shion could say another word, he was pushed onto the mattress that served as their bed in the past few days.

“You’re a big baby sometimes, you know that?” Shion said as he poked Nezumi’s nose after he lay down beside him.

“Thanks,” Nezumi said and wrapped his arms around Shion, “I try.”

“That wasn’t a compliment,” Shion narrowed his eyes, but snuggled closer to Nezumi nevertheless.

“So,” Nezumi begun, “where do you wanna go today? We’re finally done with preparations, might as well go on some sight-seeing. What about the British Museum? Buckingham Palace? London Eye?”

“Mmm,” Shion mumbled, “maybe another time. I don’t feel like going outside today.”

“We fly back to Tokyo tomorrow,” Nezumi reminded him.

“Oh, right,” realized Shion.

“We can always come back another time,” Nezumi assured. “Like on our honeymoon, for example.”

“Honeymoon?!” Shion almost jumped out of the bed.

“Well, I did promise I’d never leave you,” Nezumi explained calmly, “and that means we’re practically married, doesn’t it?”

“No! Alright, maybe,” Shion admitted, “but that doesn’t mean you can just—”

“If it means that much to you,” suggested Nezumi, “I will propose properly once we get back to Tokyo, okay?”

“No!” exclaimed Shion. “Why do you get to propose? I mean, I bet you’d just throw the ring at me the most unromantic way possible. No, sir! Besides, same-sex marriage is illegal in Japan, remember?”

“It doesn’t have to be official as long as we know we’re married,” Nezumi argued. “And if it’s that important to you, we can always do it here in the UK. Also, I’m totally going to rock that proposal, so fuck you.”

“Not if I propose first,” Shion warned.

“Fine! It’s a contest! Whoever proposes first wins!”

“You’re on!”

“But,” Nezumi conditioned, “it has to be romantic and creative. Don’t you dare do a half-assed job just because you want to be the first one to propose!”

“I would never,” said Shion, “I’m more worried about you.”

“Like I said, I’m going to rock that proposal, so get ready to eat your heart out!”

“Don’t get so cocky,” Shion reminded him, “I’m still in the game.”

“Not for long,” replied Nezumi, “I should have the perfect plan before we set foot in Japan.”

“Yeah?” Shion asked. “Well, my perfect plan will be ready before we reach the airport!”

“Ha! I’d like to see you try!”

“We’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I promised myself I won't be starting a new multi-chap fic because writing over time is hard but now I have a new idea so ugh I lied to myself again! As usual thanks to everybody especially my proof-reader guh I just want to post this thing and go


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